HORSEHEADS, N.Y. (WENY) -- Center Street Elementary will be closing its doors to students and faculty at the end of this school year.
This comes after the Horseheads Central School District's Board of Education approved new elementary zoning for the 2025-2026 school year. In a 6-3 vote on Thursday, September 19th, the decision was made during a meeting that was live streamed on the GST BOCES website.
RELATED: Horseheads CSD approves new Elementary zoning in 6-3 vote
"What's happening in the Horseheads School District is part of the Horseheads 2030 plan and actually part of a long time ago plan of district reconsolidation or merger studies," says Superintendent of Horseheads Central School District, Dr. Thomas Douglas. "When I first started, about 10 years ago and at this point, through our construction plan of Horseheads 2030, one of the options was to reduce one of our elementary schools and close it and rebuild all of our others to more current technology and size space scope."
The zoning decision is the final step of a redistricting plan approved by voters in 2021. Under the new zoning, 329 students will move to different elementary schools next academic year, including 40 students who have never attended Center Street but will need to transfer.
"This is the culmination of that redistricting plan that was voted on in 2021 and approved by our voters, and now we're going through the process to prepare for a construction project at Ridge Road to finalize part of the elementary and at such time, those students will move to Center Street for one year what construction is going on? And then ultimately back to Ridge Road once that construction is complete, thus going from four elementary schools down to three," explained Dr. Douglas.
At the meeting, the board chose zoning Option B over Option A, thus setting new boundaries to accommodate the closure of Center Street Elementary at the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
"With the shuttering of one school, eventually [moving] to three schools, they will be at about 90 to 92 percent [capacity]. But [the] population over the next five to ten years will gradually rescind a little, not a lot, but enough that we will be well within our contractual limits of our student class size, which is a maximum of 23 K through 4 starting next year, and we will be below that and then it will shrink," said Dr. Douglas.
While Center Street Elementary is set to close, the building will remain in use. Ride Road students and teachers will relocate to the building during the 2025-2026 school year, while Ridge Road undergoes construction.
Families with questions are asked to contact the district office. Horseheads Superintendent Douglas encourages people to not rely on Facebook or social media as people could be making comments that are not factual.