By JEFF MORRIS
The Bedford Central Board of Education got some input on school start times, discussed joining a local mental health clinic, and revised their budget meeting schedule at its Feb. 5 meeting.
School start times and their impact on adolescents have been subjects of extensive discussion in many school districts in recent years, with a number of districts in our geographic area having adjusted their schedules accordingly. The topic was brought front and center during public comment at this board meeting.
Suzanne Novak led off the comment period by asking the board to put the issue of moving to later school start times onto the agenda of their next meeting, and to put it into the district success plan “so that work on this issue can start in earnest.”
She was followed by six other parents who echoed her support and desire to have the board take up the issue.
The topic did not emerge in a vacuum. Novak said she had originally brought it up to the board in 2022. Superintendent Robert Glass then held two virtual town hall sessions on the topic, one in November and one in January, featuring experts in adolescent health and sleep medicine, and fellow administrators who had been involved in moving start times at other school districts. They described the positive results for students and the way they overcame the challenges of changing schedules.
Board members briefly talked about the topic afterward, but noted that the experts advised against attempting to make any changes as soon as the coming school year. It was unclear whether the topic would be included in an upcoming agenda.
Budget calendar
Glass presented the board with a proposed revision to the calendar of budget discussions that he and assistant superintendent for business and operations, Tom Cole, had arrived at after meeting with various budget advisory committees. They were already diverting from the original calendar, as it had called for Feb. 5 to include a presentation about seven budget areas. Glass said under the new proposal, they would give a new budget presentation Feb. 26, designed to answer the question: If we took this year’s budget and moved forward without any changes, where would we be? From there, he said, they would have a discussion on March 12 focused on what is recurring, what is non-recurring, what is budget neutral, and how would those items affect and move the budget.
The subsequent sessions would depend on what was talked about on March 12, and have opportunities for board discussion and community input.
“This is a way of giving the board the frame and a sense of the drivers that move, and doing it in almost a reverse engineering kind of process,” said Glass. If they chose not to accept the new calendar, the topics that were to have been discussed on Feb. 5 would simply be spread out over the subsequent meetings.”
Board president Gilian Klein asked whether the new view would present the same level of detail into specific areas of the budget that were in the old way of looking at it. Glass said that information would still be included under the new format. Trustee Steven Matlin received assurance that they would still be able to have a full discussion of all the line items in the budget on March 26. The board appeared to agree to the change without voting on it.
Northwell Health
Glass said he and some board members had been in a meeting with representatives of Northern Westchester Hospital, of which he is a member of the president’s council. NWH is part of Northwell Health. He said NWH had, a couple of years ago, started looking at what they could do to assist with the mental health crisis and improve their services. They made a proposal to all the schools in the area, he said, that they establish a clinic in Mount Kisco to serve as a kind of “urgent care for mental health.” There would be a cost to participate, but if you participated, a student in crisis, instead of being transported to the emergency room — which is not well equipped for mental health crises — would be transported to the clinic and have their needs met whether they have insurance or not, be triaged, helped to navigate the system, and directed to long-term care if needed. Glass said it would cost the district about $100,000 a year, but there would be BOCES aid that would bring it down to about $65,000.
Klein noted they would have to opt in for students to participate, and expressed concerns about a public school essentially making a referral to clinicians about whom they knew nothing. She said there were several other issues she did not think they had thoroughly addressed.
“I’m not entirely against it,” she said, “It just doesn’t feel fully fleshed out to me.”
Trustee Blakeley Lowry said she saw a lot of advantages, based on Northwell’s experience on Long Island, where they have been operating such a model for some time, with there being a continuum of services once a child comes back to school and reintegrates; she didn’t know if that would be the case with other providers. Klein didn’t know if that was really any different from a student going to any other provider.
Glass said the insurance barrier for other providers was what struck him.
“If you don’t have insurance, you don’t get access,” he said. “I think having something where they’ll seek to get your insurance, but if you don’t have it you’ll be served, makes it an option.”
He said having it as an option did not preclude people from choosing other options.
“You’re going on a journey, with a partner in the community,” said Glass, “who sees the need like we do; we’re all struggling for answers, they’re trying to create something that they think will work based on some of their experience on Long Island. It may not translate quite the same way; it may.”
What the district is getting, said Glass, “is a place to send our students where they have a chance regardless of their economic situation to get some more help, and get the appropriate help, help navigate the system, and hopefully come back to us better able to progress through the curriculum.” He said it is not guaranteed that it will pan out the way it is designed, but that is the concept.
The board continued to debate the pros and cons of opting in now versus waiting a year. Glass asked what questions the board would like answered, and they suggested a number of points — about how the clinic would be staffed and run and how its success would be evaluated — that they did not feel had been adequately addressed. With Glass made aware of what they wanted to know, the discussion ended.