By Carol P. Bartold, Senior Reporter

Jan. 3, 2018: If The Bronxville School wants to maintain its standing as one of the best schools in the United States, Bronxville Board of Education president Jeff Rohr stated, the school district must address long-overdue required maintenance for its hundred-year-old building and look toward making improvements.

“We are long overdue in addressing required maintenance and improvement in our building,” Rohr said at the board’s regular meeting on December 19, 2017. “We all know there is a direct correlation between real estate values and the quality of our school.” He added that allowing the quality of the school to decline would negatively affect real estate values in Bronxville.

A two percent tax cap, Rohr said, has made it impossible to repair and maintain the building and enhance learning spaces from operating funds.

Rohr explained that the board and administration’s strategy in addressing maintenance and improvement centers on delaying projects and grouping them into a tax-neutral 2021 bond referendum. With the debt service for the C-wing being fully paid and coming off the books in 2020, the proposed 2021 bond referendum could be achieved with no increase in taxes.

Rohr pointed out that the last significant referendum, for $31 million, occurred in 1999. Since that time, voters have approved referenda of $2 million after the 2007 flood, $835,000 for the Federal Emergency Management Agency Midland Valley Drainage Project, and $4 million for the auditorium refurbishment.

“We really can’t wait,” Rohr emphasized. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

Underlying the needs for newly configured learning spaces, however, are the realities of much-needed repairs and maintenance to the building’s infrastructure. Crumbling masonry and roof and ceiling repairs, as well as rusted pipes in restrooms, are items needing attention.

The guidance office and health center, forced into sub-optimal and small spaces after the 2007 flood, need to be updated, expanded, and improved. Rohr described the guidance center as “embarrassing compared to our competitor schools,” especially when college admissions directors visit. He noted that, with over 9,000 visits per year, the health center is “anything but healthy,” and often is challenged to accommodate students in need of attention.

Rohr also cited the need to reconfigure the cafeteria, which lacks the capacity to effectively serve the student body and often results in students having to eat lunch in various other rooms in the school.

Chambers Field, with a turf surface approaching the end of its useful life, also needs to be redone. Rohr remarked that several visiting teams have balked at playing on its aged surface. He stated that the school also needs a new playground for its youngest students.

Dr. Mara Koetke, director of curriculum & instruction, stated that the school is almost at maximum capacity in its space as currently configured. “We want students to be able to work collaboratively,” she said, “to spread out and go to places where they can work appropriately, meet with classes as a whole, and be productive in small groups and as individuals.”

“It’s a new world for teaching” Rohr noted. “We need collaboration and innovation space to be competitive with other schools around us.”

Superintendent Dr. Roy Montesano pointed out that the proposed 2021 referendum does not intend to add any space. “It’s about re-engineering the space we have for a new type of learning that we want to promote through the Bronxville Promise,” he said. He added that this type of learning takes place in a space designed for thinking and formation rather than a traditional classroom with rows of desks.

Montesano stated that the district and board will evaluate projects and their impacts and will communicate more information about the proposed referendum in early 2018.

Pictured here:  Front (L to R): Trustee Arleen Thomas, Superintendent Dr. Roy Montesano, trustee Michael Finley, and trustee Jennifer Russo; back (L to R): trustees Dr. Jack Bierwirth, Jonathan Atkeson (board vice president), Jeff Rohr (board president), and Thomas Curran.

Photo by A. Warner