ITHACA, N.Y. — The Ithaca City School District doesn’t have plans to close down any of its elementary schools just yet. Still, a recent study suggests that future school consolidation might be in the district’s best financial interest.
Over the last decade, enrollment at all but one district elementary school has declined by a median 8%. On the extreme end, enrollment at Enfield and Cayuga Heights Elementaries has declined by 20.9% and 28.9%, respectively, since 2015. Over the next decade, the study projects enrollment could drop by more than 30% at both schools.
At a Jan. 13 school board meeting, Cornell University professor Matthew Hall said census and enrollment data suggest that those figures are almost sure to further decrease over the next decade. Hall is one of several demography researchers commissioned by the district last fall to conduct a study of enrollment patterns.
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During the meeting, ICSD’s board of education was also presented with three “suggestive scenarios” that estimate the financial implications of closing between one to three elementary schools. The study lists Enfield, Beverly J. Martin and Cayuga Heights as the three schools that would result in the largest per-student savings for the district, if they were to close.
Each of the district’s eight elementary schools is currently operating somewhere between 50% to 60% its full capacity, according to Hall’s Jan. 13 presentation.
With costs on the rise, voters have shown they’re not always willing to approve the tax rates the district says it needs to keep operating at current levels.
It’s a problem for a school district that relies on property taxes to cover almost three-quarters of its yearly operating budget. State and federal funding largely covers the rest, but allocation of those funds is tied to enrollment.
The study has already begun to spark concern among some community members and educators, but board president Sean Eversley Bradwell made clear that the board hasn’t made any decisions yet on whether to close any schools.
“I want to stress to our community that this was for information purposes only,” Bradwell said. “The intent was to better understand the state of our demographics and our enrollment […] There was no other intent beyond that at this point in time.”
A later statement from the board further reiterated that there are “no active plans for the consolidation or closure of any of our schools.”
“If, in the future, the ICSD Board of Education were to consider the consolidation of any school(s), there would be many public discussions informed by data the board has not yet conceptualized or requested, let alone collected as of the January 13 meeting,” the statement said.
Still, the study shows that the best financial decision for the district points towards closing down one or more of its elementary schools someday.
“Projecting it out 10 years from now, say, what is the district spending per student on operating these facilities? And there you can see a few, what I think are the standouts: [Beverly J. Martin], Enfield and Cayuga Heights are the most clear,” Hall said.
The estimates compare each school’s projected 2035 enrollment to the estimated cost of keeping the building staffed, open and up-to-date.
Hall told the school board the initial estimated annual savings range from $1.6 million to $6.5 million, depending on which school — or schools — were decommissioned. He cautioned that the calculations do not take into account other factors, like transportation costs, changes to state aid and costs associated with the actual transition.
Hall said the examples in the report are not recommendations, but scenarios that he would advise board members, administrators and community members to “think about.”
There are other decisions riding on consolidation: the district is currently weighing which of its aging buildings to prioritize for repair — the planning of which often occurs years in advance Beverly J. Martin, which was identified as a potential candidate for closure, occupies one of the district’s oldest buildings and is due for several major repairs.
At the Jan. 13 meeting, board members and Hall also acknowledged the limitations of the report, which is primarily focused on financial impact.
“I should emphasize that this [study] doesn’t consider all sorts of other really important factors around transportation [costs] or around racial and economic equity,” Hall told board members.
A steady decline
Census data shows that birth rate and overall population has been on a steady decline in Tompkins County over the past 15 years.
The trend isn’t unique to ICSD, or even New York State. In fact, in some ways, Ithaca actually fares better than similar school districts elsewhere upstate.
Even though Ithaca sees more newcomers relative to other communities, they aren’t enough to replace those who leave — or counteract declining birthrates.
Hall said Tompkins County’s population trend is driven in part by non-U.S. citizens who come to study or work at Cornell University. If immigration is the most promising driver of Ithaca’s population growth, recent Trump administration policies do not bode well for those hoping ICSD experiences a boost in enrollment.
“If there were to be changes in immigration policy that impacted the number of international families, international students, it would put further negative pressure on [enrollment],” Hall said.
Four long-time current and former educators told The Ithaca Voice that while they had some questions about some of the finer details, the overall downward trend in enrollment largely confirms what they’ve observed over the years. They asked not to be named, fearing professional repercussions.
The district last seriously considered the matter in 2010, when leaders mulled a proposal to decommission Fall Creek Elementary School, according to newspaper articles from the time. The idea proved deeply unpopular and was ultimately shelved.
One teacher said she felt like it was only a matter of time before the district would begin to consider consolidation again. She said the hardest part to swallow would be which school — or schools — could be on the chopping block.
“Pillars of the community”
Beverly J. Martin, Cayuga Heights and Enfield Elementary schools have all been flagged by state officials in recent years for under-target performance on metrics like academic performance, attendance rate and graduation rate — though recent data suggests that scores have improved since the initial designation.
Beverly J. Martin and Enfield Elementary schools also serve a significantly larger share of the district’s economically disadvantaged students than any other school, according to state data.
Beverly J. Martin Elementary is also one of the district’s most racially diverse schools. State data shows it consistently serves the largest share of Black students of any of ICSD’s elementary schools. Archival newspaper reports from the 1970s suggest that that’s been the case for decades, even when it was still known as Central Elementary.
One veteran teacher who has worked at several ICSD elementary schools said she felt that closing Enfield Elementary would have an outsized impact for rural residents.
“[Neighborhoods like] Cayuga Heights and Fall Creek will have a tough time letting go of their neighborhood school […] but their kids can survive a change way better than Enfield kids when it comes to closing and bussing,” she said.
The teacher, who asked her name be withheld for fear of repercussion, said the families in Enfield are far less likely to be able to afford to supplement their children’s education compared to families in Ithaca’s more affluent neighborhoods.
Enfield Elementary is the only elementary school serving ICSD students on the west side of Cayuga Lake. Closing it could increase the amount of time those students spend getting to and from school each day. Bus times for some students can already exceed one hour each way, according to past school transportation data.
Community members have described both schools as pillars of their communities. In addition to the normal school day, both buildings serve as venues for community events, like childcare programs, vaccine clinics and voting sites.
State law recommends school districts form an advisory committee at least six months prior to the proposed decommissioning of a school. The committee typically is tasked with evaluating the educational and financial impacts of consolidation. ICSD has not yet formed such a committee and board members have not yet publicly mentioned plans to do so.
School board president Bradwell said that the board would also commission additional analysis before proceeding further.
“I just want to make sure that folks are clear the board is not moving in any direction other than just information gathering,” Bradwell said. “And we’ll proceed from there.”