Bruce the Blog

Kudos to the Yorktown Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano for making the decision to “rest” one of that district’s grade schools — French Hill.

With Albany-mandated cuts in school budgets rising up the radar of taxpayers and media alike, it raises the specter in Yorktown of the elephant in the classroom that now is past due for discourse: why does Yorktown need two school districts, with all the attendant costs inherent in such redundancy.

Broaching the much more complex matter of assessing the necessity of continuing to maintain two school districts with little or no synergistic cost efficiencies between them presents an Alfonse and Gaston conundrum. Who brings it up first? The Yorktown Board of Education or the Lakeland Board of Education.

We don’t know, so we’re bringing it up.

Another budgetary ramification is fundraising. More than ever, it behooves school districts to embrace, encourage and fully support the efforts of non-school organizations who raise private funding to supplement public monies because the latter is shrinking, not growing.

We look forward to boards of education working more closely and cooperatively with fundraising entities. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is president of a 501(c)(3) called the Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation that in the past seven years has raised more than $200,000 that is invested in school and town programs, facilities and constitutents. That makes my comments on this topic self-serving to some extent, but I’d be surprised if other 501(c)(3) organizations like us didn’t fully agree with the above sentiments.