On Feb. 18, I attended and spoke at the Saranac Lake Central School Board Public Hearing regarding the closure of Bloomingdale School. I was one of many people in the crowd who read statements and asked questions of the school board.

I was one of only two members from the community, of the eight members of the Buildings & Facilities Committee, that was tasked with reviewing all of the financial information, school schedules, bus routes, etc., regarding the possible closure of Bloomingdale School. The meetings were scheduled from September 2025 to June 2026.

In December, we were informed that the timeline was accelerated to meet a New York State Department of Education March 1 deadline. In January, the school board set up dates for public hearings regarding closing Bloomingdale School, and the Buildings & Facilities Committee was disbanded. Myself and Scott McKim, the only other members from the community, both wrote statements regarding our concerns that the committee was being cut five months short of our timeline to come up with alternative solutions.

In truth, we did not even receive all of the information that we needed to come up with solutions. I have a list of questions and ideas that I planned to present at our brainstorming sessions, but those meetings, as a result of the accelerated timeline, never took place.

At the end of the Feb. 18 public hearing, Tori Thurston stated, “we chose to establish the Buildings and Facilities Committee in hopes that they would come up with an alternative that we couldn’t find, something out of the box, something unique” … “we are running out of options, that’s why we started the Buildings and Facilities Committee, in the end we failed and the Buildings and Facilities Committee failed to come up with that out-of-the-box idea.”

In truth, the Buildings and Facilities Committee was doomed to fail because the Saranac Lake School Board disbanded the committee before our work could be finished. To claim that we failed to come up with any solutions is simply untrue. The school board made sure we could not come up with any alternatives by changing the timeline and disbanding the committee, using a “new reporting date requirement” as the reason.

During the Feb. 18 meeting, Tori Thurston stated, “Is a child who attends Bloomingdale more deserving than a child at Petrova? Is a child who attends Bloomingdale more important than a child that attends Petrova?”

“To use the words that have been expressed to us repeatedly the last few months, is the child that attends Bloomingdale ‘the Gem of a school’ (my words at the Feb. 4 meeting) and receives a private school education at a public school price more worthy than a child that attends Petrova? That is what we are talking about.”

This is an issue that the school board created and only the school board can change it. To put the blame on the Bloomingdale community and the parents of the students who currently attend Bloomingdale School is insulting. At no meeting has anyone ever suggested that Bloomingdale students deserve more than Petrova students, that Petrova was not a good school, or that the students at Petrova deserve less than the students at Bloomingdale. It is important to note that Bloomingdale students become Petrova students. The members of the school board removed the services from Bloomingdale School, not the community members. Several people reached out to me after that meeting to express how disrespectful Tori’s comments were to the Bloomingdale community.

I am very concerned about the size of the classrooms at Petrova. I believe it is imperative the school board knows the exact classroom occupancy for each classroom and the number of students that will be located in each class. That information should be provided to the school board, along with the plan for the 2026-2027 classrooms, if Bloomingdale were to close, before the board votes on Feb. 25.

We in the Bloomingdale community have watched for years as the chess pieces have been moved across the board: remove services from Bloomingdale School, come up with excuses why more students can not attend, only relent when parents pushed back or threaten to put their kids into St. Bernard’s, move long-term tenured teachers out of Bloomingdale School and replace them with younger staff, stop making repairs to outdoor play areas, move entire grades to Petrova, etc.

One thing is crystal clear — when you look for barriers, barriers are all you will find; when you seek solutions, you will find solutions. I believe the actions of this school board are clear and they never had any intention of finding alternative solutions to closing Bloomingdale School.

The truth of the matter is this: The entire Saranac Lake Central School District belongs to all of us. The taxpayers, the parents and grandparents, friends and family, the residents who are working two or three jobs to pay bills, including the school tax bill.

I have stated several times that the school board are volunteers and they deserve our respect. I fully stand by that statement. However, we deserve their respect as well. We deserve transparency and accountability. We deserve to know all of the debt for each school. We deserve to know what the plans are before they are put in place.

I challenge the school board to do better, trust us with your plans and share them with us — we want to know, we care, we show up. We are proud of our kids and our schools.

Keep us informed. Let us help you. If you need work done — put out the call — we will answer. If you need funds for a project, be it a door or a set of bleachers — put out the call — we will answer. Put your trust in us and we will answer.

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Davina Thurston is the St. Armand town supervisor and lives in Bloomingdale.