When Mont Pleasant Middle School welcomes students back for the first day of school on September 14, only sixth graders will be here.
That’s because 7 and 8 graders will be learning remotely this year, and so will all high school students.
“Well it’s not the best-case scenario. It’s really a horrible scenario,” said Dr. Aaron Bochniak, Schenectady City School District interim superintendent.
He says the decision to have 7 through 12 graders learning online is a way to tackle the $28.5 million deficit in state aid this year. In addition, the board of education also approved a resolution Monday night to rescind 15 new staff appointments.
“That’s something we know that if we don’t take drastic measures now, and begin to put some of those things in place now, it becomes even more difficult as the year starts,” Bochniak said.
When the board meets again Wednesday night, Bochniak says he’ll also recommend postponing pre-k until January, layoffs of pre-k teachers, paraprofessionals, and lunch monitors, and potentially merging buildings.
Currently, 60 percent of parents in the district have selected remote learning.
“Knowing that our buildings are only going to be at 40 percent capacity, we do have the ability to do some temporary condensing of some of our buildings,” Bochniak said.
He acknowledges students and teachers will be negatively affected by these catastrophic measures.
But Bochniak says the district was left with no other choice.
“We’re looking at it from that perspective of what kind of things can we make a decision to simply do without but also what’s the financial impact, and then what burden ultimately would that place on kids,” Bochniak said.