By CRAIG FREILICH

Despite the recent defeat of the proposed Potsdam-Canton school district merger, none of the three area’s three state legislators have new plans to seriously address the issue of school financing and merger options in Albany.

Assemblywoman Addie Russell and state Senators Patty Ritchie and Joe Griffo agree more money should go to schools statewide, particularly to small, rural districts such as those in St. Lawrence County. But that position has ben espoused for years, to little effect so far.

So as the annual state budget do-si-do gets under way, they are offering no new plan on how to restore the standards and programs – and funding -- lost over the last few years.

Russell is openly soliciting ideas for getting school programs back on track.

But Griffo, the Rome Republican whose district includes Potsdam, is somewhat dismissive of the voters who disapproved merging the two districts.

He believes the merger discussion degraded into “exaggerated” concerns over large class sizes and long bus rides, “despite the best efforts of the two superintendents, who did a good job of informing voters” of the details of the plan.

“It’s hard for people to make decisions when emotion enters into an understanding of the facts,” he said.

Regardless, he said, a new aid school aid formula “focusing on high-needs, low-wealth school districts” needs to be devised. “But we can’t point a finger of blame saying we’re not getting money we should have. To use that as a rationale is emotional” and counterproductive to progress, he said.

Sen. Patty Ritchie (R-Heuvelton), with Canton in her district, expressed concern that “it’s a different time for schools. In my entire district and around the state, schools are working out how to do with less.”

But she said she favors pushing back the state’s Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA), a multi-year schedule of severe cuts in school aid that are still playing out, “because if schools cut much more, they’re not going to be able to offer the kind of education we want, if we want our kids to be able to compete” with the more prosperous school districts in the suburbs on Long Island and north of New York City. “That’s a sure priority for many of us.”

“The conversation is centered around the continuing loss of academic programming and staff,” St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES Superintendent Tom Burns said. As an educator, he said, “we are more concerned about educational insolvency than financial insolvency.”

Diminishing support from state government over the last several years has left school boards and administrations in St. Lawrence County bruised as they have tried to keep intact as much of their staffs and as many of their offerings as they can, and not squeeze taxpayers any more.

Assemblywoman Russell (D-Theresa), whose district includes both Canton and Potsdam, is initiating a round of discussions that would appeal to many constituents to try to find ways to keep schools from sinking into inadequacy.

She says she wants to establish an education policy conference to hear from “everyone interested in being part of a serious discussion” – parents, school officials and more -- on ways to guarantee a sustainable future for public schools in the North Country.

“It’s important for the community to drive this, not consultants,” Russell said, making a reference to the failed consultant-driven proposal to merge the Potsdam and Canton districts. “We shouldn’t be telling them what to do. We will discuss whatever they want to.”

The Gap Elimination Adjustment, an oddly named state policy devised in the desperate days during the financial collapse of the Great Recession, shifted the budget pain from Albany to public schools in order to preserve presumably more important state functions.

All three legislators have said that the GEA should itself be eliminated by applying some of the billions of dollars the state is now getting from a legal settlement with wayward banks, but with a big pot of about $5 billion at stake, there is no shortage of ideas on how to spend it.

Complicating whatever effort the legislators can muster are the Common Core standards and teacher evaluations thrust on schools at the same moment their state funding was being cut and caps on local property tax increases were imposed by the state.

The legislators might be forgiven for not knowing which way to jump on a shifting landscape, but school districts are searching for options, such as mergers or regional high schools, to help them keep alive their mission of educating the county’s children without bankrupting themselves or their taxpayers.

The Potsdam-Canton merger attempt showed how hard it can be to join two districts together. The two districts are fairly evenly matched in size and wealth and close enough together that bus trip times might be less of an issue than in districts covering larger areas.

Considering the potentially wide differences in wealth and tax rates among districts and the chance of a successful merger diminishes, according to many school officials familiar with the situation.