Crowd wants district to renovate school

Times-Herald Record
By Jeremiah Horrigan

January 30, 2008

NEW PALTZ — It was as close to a love-in as you could expect to see when people talk about increasing the tax local burden.
The burden in question - initially at first - was the costs of either renovating the district’s existing and aged middle school or building a new one at a different location. The occasion was a school board meeting that brought scores of residents from as many walks of life to a too-small music room at the high school last night.
The result was an undeniable consensus on the question to renovate or to re-locate the aging middle school. Overwhelmingly, the request from about two dozen residents was to keep the middle school in the village, to renovate it and don’t even consider building a new one elsewhere.
Dollar amounts were presented as hypothetical figures and seemed to hold minimal interest for the crowd following an initial presentation by Superintendent Maria Rice. That may change as more solid figures are developed. But what resident after resident urged the board to do was renovate the existing building for what might best be called quality-of-life reasons: the importance for students of having the school within walking distance of the village, the need to keep future gas costs in mind ($8.50, $9.50 a gallon, who knew?) and the desire to make a renovation as green as possible.
A petition containing 802 signatures of residents from not only New Paltz but the parts of Gardiner, Esopus and Highland served by the district urged that the school be renovated.
The town and village boards, which have been able to agree on little if anything in recent years, both unanimously requested the building continue to be used as a school.
Two residents were less enthusiastic and urged the board to keep the potential costs of renovation in mind.
The meeting even featured a confession of sorts - former teachers union president Ron Simon said near the end of the public comment period that he’d changed his mind since last week and now favored renovation rather than building new. He received a loud ovation.
The board had taken no action by 10 p.m.