Boy, am I exhausted. Like most parents of young children, I work a full-time job in addition to parenting, and like most North Country residents, I also have two additional part-time jobs.

When my family moved to the North Country in 2021, we felt strongly about moving into the Saranac Lake School District based on our research and conversations with community members. For background, both my kids have participated in district-hosted UPK, my son at Petrova and my daughter at Bloomingdale, and I can confidently say that both are great schools.

I have an education in urban and regional planning, and therefore have experience working with local governments, and am very familiar with bureaucratic processes.

If you’re familiar with bureaucracy, it certainly doesn’t move at the speed of light. When my son entered UPK at Petrova in 2023, I started talking to my neighbors, friends and school board members about the dealio with the district. I was curious. This is when I first entered the conversation around closing Bloomingdale School.

We have entered an era where we expect all information to be delivered to our screens without prompting. We have lost a sense of accountability when it comes to civic engagement, even though opportunities are at our fingertips. In this digital age, I can cook dinner in my kitchen while live-streaming a school board meeting. Not only am I staying informed, but I am also exposing my children to the importance of staying involved. Civic engagement requires long-term attention and accountability by all parties. It is far easier for 12,000 SLCSD residents to visit a website than it is for a handful of board members or administrators to provide individualized outreach.

All of that said, let me share with you what I’ve learned. The Saranac Lake School Board website (found here: slcs.org/departments/board-of-education) is regularly updated and provides contact information for all school board members. Minutes, agendas, live streams and meeting recordings can all be found there. In recent conversations about district reconfiguration, the school budget has come up repeatedly.

A reminder that SLCSD residents have a chance every year to weigh in on this budget in the May budget vote. If you’d like to do some research in preparation for that vote, budget materials can be found on the school website here: slcs.org/departments/budget. Most importantly, talk to your neighbors, friends, your kids’ teachers, school staff and ask questions.

We have fallen into a pattern of reactivity when it comes to civic engagement. I have attended and/or livestreamed many school board meetings over the past year, and most recently have witnessed many passionate testimonies, specifically around the closing of Bloomingdale School.

As a parent of small children, I often reiterate the importance of approaching challenges with compassion and curiosity. When our brains are in a defensive state, it limits our creativity, and creativity is what is needed to solve our budgetary woes.

At the Feb. 4 school board meeting, there were many public comments justifying keeping Bloomingdale School open because the projected $600,000/year savings compared to a $38 million school budget is a drop in the bucket.

First, have those with that opinion reviewed the school budget documents and identified an alternative? The cost of health insurance for SLCSD as a whole is increasing by (at a minimum) $1.5 million dollars a year. Even with the $600,000 savings, our budget shortfall is still close to a million dollars. This doesn’t even account for the increases in electricity, fuel or inflation. I have experience with non-profit budgeting and relying on government funding, and I can assure you money does not just fall from the sky.

It has been suggested that our school administrators are paid too much. First, a reminder that all salary information is available on the website and is up for discussion as it plays into the school budget vote. Second, do we really think these public servants, who have dedicated decades of their lives to serving our children, are doing this for the big bucks? If I chose a job because of the salary, I’d probably choose one where the public didn’t have the opportunity to come to my workplace and tell me I’m doing a terrible job. We talk about how we are showing up because we care about the kids. You know who else cares about our kids? They do. Not to mention our school board members who are serving this district for the greater good.

All of this to say, I think we can do better. I think we can be better about approaching these big problems with kindness and curiosity. I think we can all do a little more due diligence moving forward to be more involved in our school districts and local governments as these problems arise. Accusations will not solve this problem, but creative problem-solving and collaboration may.

——

Jill Henck lives in Rainbow Lake.