Survey: Public Split on $64m Bedford Schools Bond

The Bedford Central School District faces an uphill climb in convincing voters to support a multi-million dollar bond that would be needed for its biggest building fixes.

According to new results from a phone survey conducted by Unicom-Arc, just 46.2% support that district has looked it, which includes renovations to every school building with major fixes for West Patent Elementary and Fox Lane Middle School. The exact same number are against doing it.

Rod Wright, who presented the survey to the school board at a Wednesday meeting, noted that the results mean the no side would likely win.

Unicom-Arc asked that same question again towards the end of the survey, which also had questions about what district residents value and their stances on budgeting and taxes. The results were only slightly better, with "yes" rising to  50.6% and "no" staying the same.Even with that amount, Wright noted that it is kind of "a dead heat right now."

There was a consensus against one big item the board has looked at: . Sixty-eight percent preferred to go with the cheaper comprehensive renovation scenario that has also been studied, with just 14.4 percent favored a building a new school. The remainder said do something else or were unsure. Opting to build a brand new school would push the total bond cost into the $80 million range.

“You can see that the support was overwhelming for renovation rather than building new," Wright said.

The results don't look good for some other items that the district is interested in adding to its broader capital plan, in a relative sense. For example, while a 58.2 percent majority agreed that replacing Fox Lane Middle School's 1960s era science labs should be a high or very high priority, that question was considerably lower than other districts surveyed by Wrights firm.

“Numbers just pop into the stratosphere and they weren’t there," he said about the comparison.

Other major infrastructure questions included support for replacing replacing electrical, plumbing and heating parts at the middle school (64 percent for high or very high priority) and making the buildings more energy efficient (59 percent).

While the phone survey - it was taken from 500 registered voters - may appear to be bad news for the district in its capital planning, Wright noted that doing education, and connecting the dots could help them get something passed. Connecting the dots would include letting residents know that doing improvements now is more cost effective than waiting longer, and about how the curriculum benefits from fixes.

“I would not consider the facility thing kind of a lost cause," he told school board members.

Indeed, broader questions about maintaining infrastructure favor the district's priorities. One question that asked people to agree with the statement that not doing work now will be higher costs in the future garnered 68.8 percent to somewhat or strongly agree. When asked if low interest rate meant for a good time to borrow for improvements, 68.4 agreed somewhat or strongly. Sixty percent agreed, in the general sense, with doing capital improvements based on the 10-year bond vote cycle that the district has historically taken for major work.

School board president Susan Elion Wollin felt reassured by the broader values numbers, while also noting the need for educationing people.

Superintendent Jere Hochman noted that the process is early, and that some people contacted in the survey may just be hearing about doing the capital improvements.

To see Wright's presentation to the school board, click here for the online video of the meeting.

Residents will have more chances to express their thoughts on the proposal at the district's two Future Focus meetings next week, which will gauge opinions on every major school issue. The first one will be Dec. 5, 7 p.m. at the Fox Lane High School Cafeteria, while the second one will be Dec. 6, 9:30 a.m. at the Fox Lane High School small gym.