SARANAC LAKE — As the Saranac Lake Central School District’s enrollment continues to shrink, the district is creating a advisory committee focused on reorganizing numerous aspects of its operations for efficiency — things like how best to use its buildings, its staff size, how to distribute students and staff, its bus routes and the classes it offers.

The committee’s first meeting will be on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in the high school library. This meeting will be open to the public to attend, but will not have a public comment session and will not be streamed online like the school board’s meetings. Minutes from the meeting will be taken and posted online afterwards.

This effort stems out of a report the district got last summer from the educational consulting firm Alliance Education Associates, which recommended closing Bloomingdale Elementary School in the 2027-28 school year and moving the students to Petrova Elementary to save on costs. At that time, Petrova’s enrollment is projected to be small enough to accommodate the additional students.

This idea was controversial, especially among Bloomingdale residents, and the board initially planned to set up a committee to digest the report and make a recommendation to the board. It held off on that committee and created this one, a broader one with a more expansive scope looking at the district’s entire operation.

SLCSD board Chair Mark Farmer said the district needs a different organizational structure — what they’re doing right now is not sustainable with shrinking enrollment, he said. Student enrollment dipped below 1,000 for the first time in decades on opening day last week.

“If we were just to say, ‘OK, we’re closing Bloomingdale,’ that’s not really addressing the bigger picture of why they’re recommending it,” he said. “The bigger picture is the reduction in student population.”

He said just closing the school would be a “Band-Aid.”

“We have to make better use of the funds that the public allots us to educate the children of the community,” Farmers said. “That’s the goal. When we’re done, we want to be more efficient with the money we have.”

He hopes to wrap up the committee in the spring to give them enough time to make decisions and implement them when classes start again next fall.

Farmer is set to serve as the subcommittee chair. He said the committee will have eight members — four from the school and four from the community.

Farmer said they got around a dozen applications from members of the public, fewer than he anticipated. Board members read each candidate’s application, the board clerk compiled a list of applicants and created a digital form for each board member to privately enter their three choices. The first vote resulted in several ties, so they did it again with ranked choice voting.

This may not have been in compliance with state open meetings law, since it was done over email, instead of in a meeting.

“If these appointees needed the approval of the board to be appointed, any vote to make those appointments, in our opinion, should occur within the context of an open meeting,” state Committee on Open Government Deputy Counsel Kristin O’Neill said. “Any vote by a public body is supposed to occur within the context of an open meeting.”

The board chose Suzanne Miller, Scott McKim and Karen Miemis, a Saranac Lake Teachers Association member with kids in school, who will be wearing “two hats” on the committee, according to SLCSD Superintendent Diane Fox. A fourth nominee declined, so Farmer chose St. Armand Supervisor Davina Thurston to be the fourth, Fox said.

This is an advisory committee for the board. The board makes the final decision on whether or not to accept the proposal.

Farmer has repeatedly said this will likely be the biggest decision the board makes for the district’s future in the next decade.

Not everyone will be satisfied with what happens, but they’ll do their best, he said.

He said there will be numerous times for public input at hearings and community cafes. Everyone who wants their voice to be heard will have an opportunity, he said. Contact information for all committee members will be listed online.

This committee will meet monthly, with each month focusing on a different topic — like transportation, building space and size and enrollment data. At the meeting on Wednesday, they will gather a list of topics and set a timeline to discuss them. Each member will have binders with all the data they have.

Auxiliary members — including principals, transportation staff and business office staff — will come and go for different meetings, depending on when their expertise is needed.

The school board will be discussing the committee’s findings regularly, too.

The district reported 984 students enrolled on opening day this year — 60 fewer than reported on opening day last year. The district has been experiencing a long, slow student decline for several decades now. In the 2014-15 school year, the district had 1,266 students. At the turn of the millennium, it had 1,743 students.

To learn more about the details of the report that kicked this off, visit tinyurl.com/54ne8yh3.

Over the summer, Fox made the decision to relocate the third, fourth and fifth grade classrooms at Bloomingdale to Petrova. The district needed to cut one classroom amid staffing cuts, funding shrinkage and declining student enrollment. This has temporarily made Bloomingdale a pre-K to second-grade school.

This change was opposed by parents with students in these grades at the school, and Bloomingdale residents and leaders were concerned this would lead to the school being closed entirely.

The district closed and sold its Lake Colby Elementary School in 2011, its Lake Clear School in 2009, its Broadway Elementary School on Broadway in 1974 and its River Street School in 1967.