News

Jun 07, 2023

Enrollment ‘bubble’ seen in two Syosset elementary schools

By Editorial Team | on August 03, 2023 The Syosset Central School District Board of Education’s special meeting, on Tuesday July 25th focused on potential upgrades to the district’s aging facilities.

By Editorial Team | on August 03, 2023

The Syosset Central School District Board of Education’s special meeting, on Tuesday July 25th focused on potential upgrades to the district’s aging facilities. But the trends in school district enrollment are an integral part of the discussions involving the future of all ten Syosset school buildings, and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Thomas Rogers expressed the need for flexibility to accommodate higher enrollment. Recent statistics have shown uneven growth among the district’s elementary schools.

The trends for Syosset CSD enrollment are currently noted as “Secondary Growth, Elementary Bubble.” A chart reflecting district enrollment since 2019 outlined the elementary-level bubble, but it is projected to subside with a move of the high enrollment bubble through the middle school-level, eventually reaching the high school.

In discussing the district facilities’ conditions Dr. Rogers noted that addressing the growth in enrollment as it moves up to the two middle schools and Syosset High School will create a particular challenge for the administration and board over the next several years.

Dr. Rogers said J. Irving Baylis Elementary, South Grove Elementary, and Robbins Lane Elementary are projected to remain constant in enrollment levels, but there are two elementary schools that experienced recent growth where the trend continues to indicate a surge: Berry Hill and Walt Whitman elementary schools.

“Both are projected to have a bubble and then see it subside but I think we need to plan for the possibility that the bubble doesn’t subside. That is certainly front of mind for me,” he noted.

Though Dr. Rogers said there is no guarantee, the elementary schools within Syosset CSD that are projected to lose some of their present enrollment levels are Village Elementary and A.P. Willits Elementary. He was firm that there wouldn’t be a plan to decommission any space that the school district could eventually need.

While presenting a bar graph on school district enrollment to the board, the superintendent brought up the question “How well have our district enrollment projections held up so far?”

Dr. Rogers noted that for three elementary school buildings projections have been “dead on” – but in the other four elementary schools, the projections outlined before were more aggressive to indicate levels of growth beyond what has materialized in them.

“The caveat on all of this is that we’re halfway through the summer, and summer is where we typically see the most enrollment change as summer is when families want to move, not during a school year. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the numbers inch up a little over the next month. I do think the numbers are indicative that we are either on or below projections for enrollment,” Dr. Rogers said.

Because most families tend to not move during their children’s secondary (high school) years, the projected enrollments for Syosset High are not as volatile as the lower grades are.

Considerations for further examination of Syosset CSD’s enrollment were outlined within Dr. Rogers’ presentation to the board on July 25. He explained three factors as the accuracy of enrollment projections, continued trends for remote work which have led many to move to Long Island, as well as additional residential construction projects taking place within the school district’s boundaries.

“I do think the environment is different now with remote work trends and those trends are also evolving, so I think we’ll have to stay attentive to that evolution. Certainly it is hard to drive around Syosset and not notice that there’s still a lot of residential construction going on. We’d be wise if we are going through a period of doing construction on our school buildings, that we add enough capacity so that we’re not worried that we might run out of capacity at some point in the future (due to an increase in enrollment),” Dr. Rogers said.

Back in June the Syosset Board of Education reviewed facilities and physical plant upgrades that would accommodate a higher enrollment. Those measures included replacements of portable classroom or educational activity rooms; an additional classroom for South Woods Middle School; enrollment growth management for Berry Hill and Walt Whitman Elementary Schools and more.

“During the board’s tours we did talk about the enrollment challenge that we’re going to see, particularly at the high school, the limitations that we have on the space allocated for student athletics. The building has constraints on the Robotics program because of the size of the space it’s in. Although we did renovate much of the science classroom space at our secondary level in the last facilities bond project we did not get to all of them so there’s certainly more work to be done there. The idea of co-locating mental health and support services for students is something a lot of school districts are doing, and we’ve just finalized our partnership with Northwell Health to support our mental health services for students. With them we’re thinking about some of the best practices they have observed in other school districts that are already partnering with them,” Superintendent Rogers said.

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