Optimism surged eight years ago in Mount Vernon after voters approved a $106 million bond to reorganize the city’s schools. The district’s two middle schools would be eliminated, with grades 7 and 8 dispersed to 13 elementary schools.
The K-8 model would keep students in their friendly neighborhood elementary schools for two more years, so they could avoid the social pressures of a big middle-school campus — and staunch the flight of students to private schools for middle and high school.
Eight years later, the school district faces daunting financial problems and has declared the K-8 experiment for all elementary schools is too costly in the face of declining student enrollment.
Now the district wants to close three K-8 schools before next fall, which would save the cost of repairs to those buildings and reduce costly inefficiencies. It won’t get easier for Mount Vernon. A recent study predicts a further 20% decline in enrollment over the next decade.
The schools on the chopping block serve a total of only 920 students. They are Cecil H. Parker School on South 6th Avenue; the former Nichols School on North High Street, now called the Mount Vernon Leadership Academy; and the Mount Vernon Honor Academy, located next to district offices on North Columbus Avenue.
The district cited three reasons for selecting these schools for closure: lower enrollments, substantial repairs needed, and the marketability of these buildings.
The Mount Vernon Leadership Academy, photographed Dec. 3, 2024. In an effort to address falling enrollments and rising costs, the school district plans to close the school and two others.
“We are in fiscal distress,” said Acting Superintendent K. Veronica Smith. “We need to make changes to get out of this situation. We want to be able to give our students a much better education. Today we aren’t able to sustain this model.”
Schools plagued by chronic underfunding
The district’s announcement on Dec. 2 came as the city school district deals with chronic underfunding, caused by the school board’s reluctance to raise the tax levy for the past decade and the widespread non-payment of property taxes.
K. Veronica Smith, acting Mount Vernon School Superintendent, photographed Dec. 3, 2024. In an effort to address falling enrollments and rising costs, the district plans to close three of its 16 schools.
City property tax scofflaws have left an annual budget hole of at least $5 million a year for the past several years.
More: Mount Vernon financial woes escalate, with $59M in unpaid taxes and 5% tax hike proposed
Meanwhile, the district is paying for two superintendents of schools. Superintendent Waveline Bennett-Conroy has been on paid leave since April, 2023 amidst a federal corruption investigation and costly arbitration process that could lead to Bennett-Conroy’s firing.
Bennett-Conroy earns $285,000 while at home, with the district spending close to $300,000 over the past year on legal fees to oust her.
School board President Adrienne Saunders, a proponent of the school district’s no-tax increase policy, said she has learned that cash-strapped Mount Vernon voters have an aversion to tax increases, citing the resounding rejection of a 0.5% tax levy increase in recent years.
She also railed against tax abatements the city has granted to development projects that have deprived the district of needed property-tax income.
“We don’t have the luxury of increasing taxes,” said Saunders. “Voters have to vote on it. We tried to raise taxes, and voters said no.”
The timetable for acting is tight. The district hopes to submit a request to rezone the schools to Southern Westchester BOCES in February and submit a petition to the state Education Department by March 1, with the schools closed by June 30.
Araceli Coyt, left, Bethany Flannery, and Erica Peterson, all Mount Vernon City School District PTA members, were photographed outside the Cecil Parker Elementary School in Mount Vernon on Saturday, December 7, 2024.
Mount Vernon schools proposed for closure
The Parker School, built in 1936, needs $2.5 million in priority repairs, according to the district’s plan for a districtwide bond proposal currently in the planning stages. The Leadership Academy, built in 1924, needs 3.3 million in priority repairs, while Honor Academy, built in 1954, needs $5 million in priority repairs.
The cost balloons to $71 million for all repairs, priority and otherwise, needed at these three schools.
The Mount Vernon Honor Academy, photographed Dec. 3, 2024. In an effort to address falling enrollments and rising costs, the school district plans to close the school and two others.
Inefficiencies in the K-8 model became apparent when the district had to reassign staff for 7th and 8th grade students who were formerly taught in the two much larger middle-schools. Those schools enjoyed economies of scale for subject-matter teachers, with students rotating classrooms for math, science, language and social studies instruction.
With the K-8 model, the 13 schools each have between 48 and 95 students total in grades 7 and 8 – not enough to sustain fulltime teachers in some of the specialties. Some teachers have to be assigned to two or three K-8 schools, forcing them to drive from school to school on a daily basis.
The Edward Williams School, which is not scheduled for closure, had just 15 seventh-graders and 33 eighth-graders for this school year.
Mount Vernon HS PTA chief: Our kids ‘deserve everything that Scarsdale gets’
Many parents have raised questions about the reorganization — both at last Monday’s Board of Education meeting and at a Town Hall meeting on the plan, held at 6 p.m. on Friday.
Parent Erica Peterson, president of the Mount Vernon High PTA, said parents are frustrated and upset by the news and the school board’s proposal. While acknowledging that school closures may be warranted, she said the school board bears some responsibility for the financial crisis.
“We’re paying $500,000 in superintendent salaries to two people, and are spending $300,000 more on legal fees,” said Peterson. “We’re in dire straits. I just wish the best for our children. They deserve everything that Scarsdale gets. They deserve everything that Chappaqua gets.”
More: Mount Vernon schools spend big on law firm to oust suspended superintendent Bennett-Conroy
Mount Vernon, one of the region’s most impoverished districts, has 6,454 students this year, with 62% of students Black, 30% Latino, 5% white, and 3% other, according to the state Education Department. It’s a district with substantial needs: 74% of students are economically disadvantaged, 20% have disabilities, and 8% are English language learners.
What the new school configuration could look like
Closing the three schools would mean reassigning about 920 students, creating uncertainty for hundreds of families.
The district’s plan has to consider the delicate balance between the city’s north and south sides, as north side neighborhoods are more well off.
The Cecil H. Parker School in Mount Vernon, photographed Dec. 3, 2024. In an effort to address falling enrollments and rising costs, the school district plans to close the school and two others.
Four K-8 schools would continue to operate: Pennington and Lincoln on the north side, and Graham and Benjamin Turner on the south side.
Rezoning would reassign students displaced by the closures. Some students now in K-8 programs would instead end up at Denzel Washington School for the Arts, which serves grades 6 to 12. Others would be sent to the city’s STEAM Academy, which would be expanded from its 9-to-12 format.
Elementary reassignments would be to buildings closest to students’ former schools. Students from the Honor Academy are slated for either the Traphagen, Graham or Lincoln schools. Parker School students would go to Benjamin Turner or Grimes, while Leadership Academy students would go to either Hamilton or Mandela.
Dr. Bethany Leddy Flannery, president of the Pennington School PTA, said the K-8 model has worked well at their north side school. But even that success has not stopped the exodus of students.
She’s concerned with the district’s criteria for choosing schools to close, which included the school’s appeal in the real estate market. For instance, the former Nichols schools, now called the Leadership Academy, has an ample field on North High Street.
“If they are going to sell the properties to raise money, who is going to buy them and what are they going to do with them?” she said. “Some of them have green space, and we’ll end up with an apartment building. The school grounds provide important green space and are the lifeblood of the community.”
Mount Vernon’s student enrollment continues to plummet
Adding to the troubling situation in Mount Vernon is the steady decline in school enrollment.
Over the decade from 2013 to 2023, the district’s enrollment plummeted by 20%, from 8,060 students to almost 1,600 fewer, according to a study conducted by Southern Westchester BOCES.
The study projects further enrollment declines over the next decade, predicting an additional 20% fall-off by 2033. This would mean losing another 1,315 students, with enrollment dropping to to 5,168.
The study documented a dramatic drop in Mount Vernon households with children under the age of 18. In 2000, the U.S. Census reported that 37% of households had school-age children, compared to 31% in 2020.
In addition, the study found the number of births dropped by 13%, from 906 in 2011 to 789 in 2021.
Complicating matters is the rapid escalation in the cost of Mount Vernon homes. The median sales price for single family homes more than doubled from 2012 to 2022, rising from $307,500 to $620,000.
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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government accountability. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mount Vernon NY school closures proposed as enrollment plummets