Officials in merged districts see greater academic opportunities for students

On Board Online • April 7, 2025

By Paul Heiser
Senior Research Analyst

In 2013, the Ilion and Mohawk school districts in Herkimer County merged to become the Central Valley school district. Six years later, the Boquet Valley school district began operation after the merger of the Elizabethtown-Lewis and Westport school districts, both in Essex County. This article examines the experiences of these two merged districts as declining enrollment has prompted school districts throughout the state to consider their options.

Greater academic opportunities and more extracurriculars

Until their eventual merger, the Ilion and Mohawk school districts had a handful of Advanced Placement (AP) and college preparatory courses between them. Now, the Central Valley school district boasts 16 AP courses and 25 to 30 College Now courses. College Now is a collaborative program with Herkimer Community College that allows students to earn college credits by taking and passing courses with a college-approved syllabus.

"The merger has created a lot of academic opportunities for kids," said Richard Keeler, principal of Central Valley's high school. "In fact, we just hired a teacher who graduated from high school three years ago because he started college as a sophomore after receiving a full year of college credits from the College Now program. We were also able to bring back our business education program."

Jonna Costin, a native of Ilion, was an elementary physical education teacher in the Ilion school district at the time of the merger and is currently teaching at Central Valley's high school. She noted that she has two children enrolled in the district - a seventh grader and an eighth grader - and views the merger as enhancing their opportunities.

"I get to see all the great electives and opportunities we offer our kids," she told On Board. "We can offer much more than if Mohawk and Ilion had remained separate."

Also, the merger resulted in more sports teams and extracurricular activities. For example, the merged district was able to add girls lacrosse and an ROTC program, as well as maintain the orchestra that Ilion had.

"When we compare to other districts, kids have more opportunities and pathways to find their way," Superintendent Jeremy Rich told On Board.

The same has been true in Boquet Valley. Prior to the merger, Westport had a handful of electives - primarily in sciences and English, while Elizabethtown-Lewis had a few electives in social studies. The merger meant that students had a larger array of electives than they otherwise would have. In addition, teachers were freed up to offer more electives in general, such as AP English, AP Social Studies, AP Sciences and other college-level courses in partnership with North Country Community College.

"We have seen an incredible increase in the number of academic and cocurricular offerings," said Superintendent Joshua Meyer. "Both districts prior to the merger were not offering much beyond what was required. Now, the number of AP and college-level courses and electives is large for a district of our size. That's really where we're seeing the most benefit."

Sarah Rice, an 11th-grade English teacher in the district, has seen the changes from the perspective of a teacher, parent and long-term resident of the area. She taught at Elizabethtown-Lewis before the merger, became an 11th-grade English teacher post-merger, and brought up two children in the district.

"The course offerings are much better," she said. "Pre-merger, a section of ninth grade might have had three students in honors classes and 19 in regular classes. Now there is a lot more balance in the numbers of students in each section. We are also seeing more than two students in electives, and there are more opportunities for students to access teachers for academic improvement services."

Rice also has welcomed the opportunity the merger has given teachers to concentrate on fewer subjects and grade levels and collaborate with other teachers in their content area - in her case, English. She said that has given teachers a chance to learn from one another's teaching styles and more planning time.

Improved financial stability

The state has provided a strong financial incentive for districts to merge through a special form of state aid called reorganization incentive aid. The additional funding amounts to a 40% increase in state aid for each of the first five years that a merged district is in operation. Beginning with the sixth year, incentive aid decreases by four percentage points per year and ends after 14 years.

Prior to the 2024-25 school year, that calculation was based on the 2006-07 formula operating aid for each of the predecessor districts. Now, however, the formula is based on the effective date of the merger.

Central Valley is poised to receive about $42 million in additional state aid over 14 years as a result of the merger. That is welcome news for a district that is heavily dependent on state aid. According to data from the State Education Department, 73.5% of the district's funding came from state aid in 2022-23, the most recent year for which data were available.

"We have gotten a tremendous boost from reorganization aid," said James Humphrey, Central Valley's school business administrator. "We have been able to use that money to do large-scale capital projects, and our reserve funds were bolstered. We also kept the tax levy low, which the merger was designed to do."

According to Jason Sanchez, the school board president, having the financial stability that the incentive aid provided has been important for the district. "You are able to take care of a lot of things when your finances are taken care of," he said.

Nevertheless, the district's reorganization aid will run out soon, as it is in the twelfth year of the 14-year incentive period. Hard financial decisions will need to be made once the funding runs out.

"We have been getting less (money) each year," said Superintendent Jeremy Rich. "We have had to budget carefully so that when the incentive aid drops off, we don't have to cut programs. This is a poor district that relies greatly on state aid. A 1% increase in the tax levy amounts to only about $80,000, which is not much."

According to a NYSSBA report on mergers published in 2013, Robert Guiffreda, the retired district superintendent for Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES, suggests merged districts apportion one-third of their incentive aid to tax relief, one-third to enhanced programming, and one-third for capital building. If a merged district needs to put up a new building, a larger share should be devoted to building.

In Boquet Valley, none of the reorganization incentive aid the district has received so far has been used for operations; in anticipation of placing all students on one campus, the aid was placed into a capital improvement fund and other reserves. Currently, the district operates out of two aging buildings for 460 students - one in Westport for PK-5 and the other in Elizabethtown-Lewis for grades 6-12.

"Before the merger, nobody had an exact image of how the merger would work out," said Superintendent Joshua Meyer. "After the merger, we are operating far more efficiently in terms of budgeting. We are still looking at options to get into one building, which will allow us to operate even more efficiently. For example, instead of having two cafeterias - one in each location - we would have only one, as we do by having one superintendent, one special education director, etc."

Meyer said that Boquet Valley is set to receive $6 million over 15 years in reorganization incentive aid. If they were to merge now, under the new reorganization aid formula, they would have received $18 million. "For other districts considering mergers, the financial incentive now is massive," he said.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing in Boquet Valley, though. Rice said the district continues to struggle with inadequate athletic fields, and some teachers and administrators have to move between the district's two buildings.

"If you merge but don't build, it can be very difficult," she said. "We are trying to maintain existing buildings, which can create pockets of inefficiency with staffing and maintenance."

According to Board President Heather Reynolds, the district has been frustrated pursuing a proposed capital project that would have allowed the district to create one school building to house all grades from K-12.

"The state pushed back on the district's stated need for an auditorium and science labs, objecting that they were not necessary," said Reynolds. "There were also delays in the review process. A six-week turnaround time eventually turned into two years for the building plan that was ultimately defeated by voters."

Equalizing teacher salaries can be challenging

When two districts merge, salaries are often "leveled up," meaning the pay scale of the higher paying district is adopted for the newly formed district. In Central Valley, that was easier said than done.

"If I could point to one negative of the merger, it would be that the pay of some former Mohawk teachers still lags behind that of former Ilion teachers, even for teachers with the same longevity teaching the same subject," said Costin. "There was an initial attempt to level teacher pay, but there is still a lag between the two."

According to Humphrey, the district's school business administrator, this was because each district had unique longevity language in its teacher contract. As a result, the merged district has no real salary schedule. Instead, everyone receives yearly increases. Ultimately, while salaries were not identical or leveled up precisely, all teachers ended up better off and the district was able to avoid looming staff cuts.

"We got rid of the whole concept of step and increment," he said. "From an administrative standpoint, that was one of the biggest accomplishments was to settle salaries without a contract."

In Boquet Valley, the salary structures of the two merged districts were close to begin with, according to Supt. Meyer. The teacher contract was thus negotiated from scratch. While salaries weren't necessarily leveled up, no employee made any less than prior to the merger.

Nonetheless, issues other than salary must be considered when merging two teacher unions that have different interests, backgrounds and philosophies, according to Rice. These include items such as class preparation time and time off.

Loss of identity? Feelings and impressions vary

When school districts merge, individual team nicknames disappear. Mascots become obsolete. Sports rivals become teammates. The loss of local identity can be a sore point in many communities and has been cited as a key reason for the defeat of a number of proposed mergers.

"With mergers, you often hear about how difficult it is to bring two communities together," said Jason Sanchez, the Central Valley board president. "I didn't see that here."

Superintendent Rich said that there were pre-merger worries about bad blood between students from the rival districts. However, those fears never materialized. "Kids became best friends with other kids who they otherwise never would have known," he said.

Central Valley's merger had a greater impact on the adults than the students, according to Costin. "There was a lot of concern at the beginning about how it would go," she said. "For the first year there felt like a little rift, particularly among parents, but the communities have largely moved past that point."

Costin noted that in an effort to retain some of the history and traditions of the old school districts, a Hall of Fame was created with notable alumni and staff from Mohawk and Ilion recognized. They also retain separate sports records for the two districts.

Since the 2019 merger that created Boquet Valley, school officials report that many community residents have clung to their original school district's identities. Debates over school names and school colors came to the forefront.

"There is still a lot of lingering conflict over the merger," said Board President Heather Reynolds. "Those feelings can leak into the classroom."

Boquet Valley Superintendent Meyer said the merger has been mostly seamless amongst students and staff. He noted that all of their athletic teams were shared between the two districts, and the districts shared faculty as well. Nonetheless, he said, the old divisions resurface from time to time.

"This year, we have done some great work with our facilities committee and think that we are getting close to a solution where the school will be in one community over the other," he said. "We are in the process of confirming the logistics and cost of this option. It has been so difficult to get to any consensus, and I appreciate the work that our committee and community have put into this effort."

The role of school board members in merger success

In both mergers, school board members are viewed as having been essential to the successful outcomes.

"The power of the school board in these little districts cannot be overstated," said Boquet Valley's Rice. "They are absolutely invaluable in sharing information."

The same was true in Central Valley: "The merger went great because we had a lot of great people and leadership, and we had outstanding boards of education," said Rich.