Jamestown Public School budget issues due to COVID-19 have already impacted students attending the Career P-TECH Academy, like Gavin Swanson, who was abruptly disenrolled last week. Submitted Photo

The economic impact of COVID-19 is already taking a toll on local education programs, as administrators and school boards struggle to cope with funding shortfalls.

The issue immediately hit students enrolled in the Career P-TECH Academy through BOCES, a competitive six-year commitment program focused on advanced manufacturing. Gavin Swanson was nearing the completion of his junior year at P-TECH, following a track in mechanical technology and computer aided design, with plans to become a commercial airline pilot. That arrangement was abruptly derailed on May 18.

“I got the phone call from P-TECH,” said Tina Swanson, Gavin’s mother. “She let me know that Jamestown had decided to disenroll all of their kids for next year. She had no idea why, but said that it was happening. It was devastating news.” Since entering the program in ninth grade through Jamestown Public Schools, Swanson has made the journey north to the P-TECH campus in Dunkirk every day. There, students work with local manufacturers in a hands-on, technology-driven learning environment.

“The program really is what you make of it and it is quite incredible,” Gavin Swanson said. “The impact is extremely hard when theytake that away. I knew within a week that I loved the school, and the small class sizes and the discussion. All of the opportunities that the school has given me to practice things in the leadership realm, to practice things in education, to learn things that are completely outside of my degree.”

Through the P-TECH program, Swanson had a clear path forward to his future, one that would pair well with the pilot’s license he attained at age 17. With budget issues causing Jamestown to disenroll students from the program, P-TECH students have been left wondering how they can move forward.

“With Gavin, we haven’t been focused on, how is he going to go to college? Because we already knew how he was going to go to college,” Tina Swanson said. “This isn’t just cutting a program, this is cutting a program right in the middle. It is not just us, it’s other families too.” Swanson has been assigned a case worker through Jamestown Public Schools to help continue his tech-driven academic path, but there is only so much that can be done once the program is cut. P-TECH students now face the difficult proposition of trying to slide into a novel academic environment, while the last several years have been spend on a different track.

“It is a bad deal for both the Success Academy kids and the P-TECH kids. It’s awful,” said Dr. Bret Apthorpe, Jamestown Public Schools Superintendent. “The board is in an awful predicament because there is no money. The only way you are going to restore any of those programs is laying off more teachers.”

The budget proposed by Apthorpe and the school board includes unprecedented cuts, and questions still remain about how much state revenue will be reduced.

“The governor still hasn’t released revenues for schools,” Apthorpe said. “He’s threatening to cut 20% of our revenue, which would be a $14 million reduction. It’s horrible. We had to eliminate 40 positions. We’re forced to increase class sizes at a time when social distancing is required.”

Regarding P-TECH students, Apthorpe mentioned that case workers have been assigned to help them continue their academic tracks through Jamestown Community College and the Manufacturing Technology Institute. That, however, may not be a perfect replacement for the opportunities available through P-TECH.

“The case managers are going to help them navigate, to get the credentials that they would have received had they stayed in the P-TECH program,” Apthorpe said. “So that would mean working with JCC, working with the Manufacturing Institute in Jamestown, because we have a commitment to those kids.”

Concerns for P-TECH students include the effectiveness of shifting to other programs, the precedent of schools disenrolling, and communication during the process. The Swansons have had difficulty expressing their concerns at online school board meetings, a symptom of widespread communication issues during the pandemic.

“Communication throughout this whole pandemic process regarding the budget has been broken,” Apthorpe said. The school board had originally rescheduled meetings during May based on the belief that information on revenues would be forthcoming from Albany. That information is still not available.

In order to marshall support, Swanson and other P-TECH students have created a petition on change.org, and are opposed to passing a budget that ends the program. A budget hearing is scheduled for June 1 at 6 p.m., which can be found at www.jpsny.org/budgethearing. Absentee ballots for budget and school board voting are due in by 5 p.m. on June 9.

Gavin Swanson stated his concern that students cannot be re-enrolled in the program after they are removed, and had not heard of other public schools cutting support for P-TECH. Some budget funds that are spent on BOCES programs can be recouped through state assistance the following year, however, that funding in light of Covid-19 is likely to be bleak.

“BOCES aid is received the following year,” said Lisa Almasi, Jamestown Public Schools Chief Operations Officer. “So whatever we spend this year will be received next year. In 2018-19 we spent $9.3 million for BOCES only, and the aid we anticipate this year is $4.4 million. I have reached out to BOCES before to find out how much aid we receive for that particular program, and they did not get back to me. Unfortunately by cutting that program, we were able to save teaching positions. That was the main goal with this budget, is to keep people.”

The Swansons had proposed the alternative of cutting parts of the budget not related to academic programs, such as extracurricular funding. With staffing positions already on the chopping block, school officials feel that any extra funding of that type has been trimmed away.

“There’s absolutely no extras like uniforms, equipment, instrument repairs. All of that has been stripped out of the budget,” Apthorpe said.