Saugerties Central School District administrators need to close a budget gap of more than $5 million, and the superintendent says it can be done without any effect on the quality of education.

Reinhardt has given the school board three consolation plans to consider.

Each requires closing one of the district’s four elementary schools and reconfiguring grades.

“This is a process that’s student-centered,” Superintendent Kirk Reinhardt said during an interview Wednesday in his office. “Every decision we make is about student achievement.”

Reinhardt said that based on data from each school, a leading candidate to be the odd school out is Grant D. Morse Elementary.

A coalition of parents have been fighting plans to close any of the schools.

“I implore you not to move forward with this plan,” one speaker said during Tuesday’s board meeting, which lasted three and a half hours.

Several parents said they were concerned about longer commutes to school and staff cuts. Reinhardt said the problem is about more than money, and that the restructure would ultimately still be necessary, even without a budget crunch.

Enrollment at Saugerties schools dropped from about 3,500 students in 2005 to about 2,300 now, and class sizes have not evened out. While some kindergarten classes have as few as 14 students, at least one sixth grade class has 28 students.

Reinhardt said the best solution is to consolidate and reconfigure.

“The students sitting in front of us change," he said. “The needs of our students change. Our job is to improve our craft every day to improve the learning of our students.”

Reinhardt also recommended that if a school is closed, it be repurposed to include expanded universal pre-k and special education offices.

Board members, meanwhile, asked the crowd at Tuesday’s meeting to continue coming to the board’s general and governance meetings, and to refrain from attacking board members on social media.

If the parent coalition were to convince the board to vote against any consolidation, the next budget would likely require exceeding the state’s 2% cap on yearly property tax increases to fund schools.

To exceed the cap, the public must vote to approve it.

This story has been edited to correctly reflect the name of Grant D. Morse Elementary.