Officials Eye Centralized High Schools

Jack Perna, the superintendent of the Montauk School District, was among those who responded Monday at a League of Women Voters of the Hamptons forum on potential school mergers, sharing his vision for the consolidation of all the districts on South Fork.

“I’d rather see a larger merger than just East Hampton or just Southampton,” Mr. Perna said. “I’d rather see the two towns on the whole fork merge. . . . We could make a bigger difference that way.”

Mr. Perna was not alone at the forum in supporting consolidation. Chris Dyer, superintendent of the Tuckahoe School District, and Scott Farina, superintendent of the Southampton School District, said they still favored merging their  districts, even though their voters had differed on whether a merger should take place. Voters in Tuckahoe, where taxes would have decreased, overwhelmingly favored a merger; voters in Southampton, where taxes would have increased, did not.

By pooling student populations, resources, space, and ideas, Mr. Perna said programs could be expanded and new ones begun. He suggested that a regional system could establish specialized high schools, for concentrations on science and technology, the humanities, or the performing arts. He also said it would ease the pressure that paying tuition puts on the small districts, such as Montauk, Amagansett, and Springs, that send students to high schools in other districts.

“I’ve been saying it for a long time,” Mr. Perna said after the meeting. “I’ve talked to BOCES [the Board of Cooperative Educational Services], but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere.” Because state law  requires people in both communities to vote to approve a merger, Mr. Perna said, “as long as the state doesn’t change the law, I don’t think it will ever happen.”

Two feasibility studies had concluded that a merger between Tuckahoe and Southampton would be beneficial. “The merger was going to be a win-win,” Mr. Dyer said. “We were going to have educational opportunities for our kids, and we were going to have fiscal responsibility for our taxpayers.”

Now, Mr. Farina said, the conversation has shifted. “I think we need to start behaving in a way as if we are participating in a merger through shared services. There certainly are ways that districts can get together. . . . Until we get over that hump of the taxpayers voting for mergers, I think we need to do that.”

The Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor Districts, which have their own high schools, were also represented at the forum.  Katy Graves, the Sag Harbor superintendent, said yesterday that Mr. Farina was on the right track. “As we share more services, it will develop more trust and more successes, and I think that’s the route we need to go. The mergers concern people because we haven’t developed that trust yet.”

“We need to recognize the traditional model of having separate little districts . . . really doesn’t bring us quality education,” Mr. Dyer said.

Julie Lutz, chief operating officer of Eastern Suffolk BOCES, reported that 30 school districts in the state had studied mergers since 2010, but none had moved ahead. “I firmly can say that I believe, and I think we have good evidence, that we can provide better educational programs for students with many more economies of scale” if districts are merged, she said.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who also took part in the forum, said that a bill that would allow small districts to form regional high schools was making its way through the Legislature. Suffolk County also has a law that allows centralized high school districts, he said.

According to Mr. Thiele, centralized high school districts have not been favored by the New York State Education Department, although it may be willing to take another look. “The regional high school bill would allow existing school districts to join together and not give up home rule, but enter into an agreement to provide for a regional high school which could have a separate governing board.”

Discussion of school district consolidation is not new on the South Fork. In 1992, a Suffolk County panel suggested that 14 districts between Westhampton Beach and Montauk be joined into one or two larger districts. State officials, including then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, urged six of seven local districts, excluding East Hampton, to combine into one or more.

In 1997, however, a state study of consolidation of the East Hampton, Montauk, Springs, and Amagansett districts concluded that neither a merger nor a centralized high school district was financially feasible. Such a merger was again broached in 2002, when representatives of the Montauk, East Hampton, and Amagansett districts met to discuss it. At the time, Mr. Perna was behind a centralized high school district, while Dominic Mucci, then superintendent of the Springs School District, favored studying the possibility.