Updated 11:44 a.m. July 6

By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The Massena Central School board will be taking extra steps to keep the process of drafting a building consolidation study open and done in public.

At their Wednesday night meeting, the board heard from education consultant Alan Poole from Castallo and Silky Consultants. The Board of Education last month voted to hire the firm to aid them in studying the district and possibly recommending to consolidate the district’s buildings.

The board seemed receptive to Poole’s three main recommendations: form an advisory committee of school employees and community members, come up with a main question to study and decide which form the recommendation should come in.

Although the board has yet to officially decide how many people will sit on the committee, Poole recommended three teachers, two administrators, two support staff and six community members.

“The committee we hope will advise us about Massena, to get that culture piece,” Poole said. “We anticipate having six to seven meetings with an advisory committee.”

A presentation showed the committee plans to meet Sept. 20, Nov. 1, Dec. 20, Jan. 31, March 1, April 11 and May 30, with a presentation of recommendations to the board on June 21.

“These things take a lot of time. It’s very possible the final report could be 80 to 100 pages long,” Poole said.

He recommended Superintendent Patrick Brady, business office employees and members of the school board not be committee members. He believes they should act in an advisory capacity.

"We don’t necessarily believe it’s a great idea to have board members on the committee. The board is the body that creates the need for the study … that appoints an outside firm … monitors the progress and gets regular updates from the superintendent. And in the end, the board receives the report from the consultants,” Poole said.

School board trustee Kevin Peretta said he feels spouses of district employees should not serve on the committee.

“The only thing I’m trying to look way down the road toward the acceptance of this in the end … a lot of times employees from the district, their spouses would want to be involved because they’re engaged in the school,” Peretta said. “If we can keep as much removal from employee spouses to the community members, I think that would have more of a broad-based representation to make sure it’s accepted and not seen as biased.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Some people are going to see that as the board trying to manipulate,” Poole said.

The advisory committee meetings and materials should all be open and available to the public, Poole said.

“We will go overboard to make sure all the materials we use are in the open,” he said.

He said they will also need to decide how to pick the community members, whether they’re self-selected or nominated by the board.

The study will address six areas, Poole told the board: enrollment history and projections; instructional and extracurricular programs; facilities; transportation; staffing; and finances.

It will be paid for with state grants, $30,000 from Sen. Joe Griffo, R-Rome, and $25,000 from Assemblywoman Addie Jenne, D-Theresa. Brady said they will likely not use all of the money.

The board several years ago commissioned a building consolidation study, but they rejected the findings. Consultant Dr. Bruce Fraser suggested putting grades eight through 12 in the high school and five to seven in what is now J.W. Leary Junior High. Under his plan, the elementary grades would have been separated into two buildings. He came up with his report after a couple of days walking through the district buildings, with no input from a community committee.

“It was a two-day site visit by the consultant and he put together a report,” Trustee Paul Haggett said.