Dear St. Regis Falls Central School District Community,
This afternoon, I had the opportunity to talk with reporter Amy Feiereisel at North Country Public Radio regarding the St. Regis Falls Central School District, the 2023-24 school year, and our plans moving forward. St. Regis Falls CSD Board of Education President Maggie Engels joined me for the interview.
Together, we are looking toward a future filled with collaboration, and positive experiences for students, staff and our families. While today’s interview covered some difficult topics, we will continue to build and strengthen relationships that are critical to the success of our school district.
Today we discussed our school district’s financial challenges. During the difficult 2024 budget season, we conducted a thorough review of contracts, teacher:student ratios, and programming. As you may know, after discussion and considering several scenarios, the board of education reduced the number of staff positions in the district from 83 in the 2023-24 school year to 67 for 2024-25. These reductions were made through resignation, termination and retirement.
In addition to staff reductions, we discussed the significant personnel and board of education turnover, which has resulted in feelings of uncertainty within our school community.
Although the past few months have been unsettling for our staff and community, we are looking forward to beginning the 2024-25 school year with a complete staff. Right now, we have seven open positions and are nearly fully staffed for grades prekindergarten through grade seven.
While we work to fill vacancies at the secondary level, we are exploring various ways to provide our students with non-traditional learning opportunities. Some of these strategies include:
Regionalizing credit by sharing teachers with other districts and/or BOCES.
Offering courses through our Distance Learning network.
SRF teachers providing incidental teaching in areas of strength.
We are currently seeking an elementary classroom teacher, a math teacher, a science teacher, a special education teacher, and a part-time foreign language teacher, all at the secondary level. In addition, we will continue our search from last school year for a full-time guidance counselor, school psychologist and a part-time speech pathologist. Those interested in applying should visit our website at www.stregiscsd.org.
Our district leaders understand the importance of timely and transparent communication with all stakeholders, and recognize the district’s shortcomings in these areas in the past. We are committed to using this time during summer break to review our processes and implement new strategies to ensure that our school district is a source of positive, trusted and timely communication moving forward.
In addition to improving our communications practices, we would like to embrace the 2024-25 school year as a year of gratitude. We are grateful for this opportunity to focus on rebuilding a positive school district culture that fosters growth, collaboration and a healthy working and learning environment for all.
Sincerely,
Dr. Nicole Eschler
Superintendent of Schools