Village Group Wants Change of School District

A group of Southampton Village residents whose homes fall within the , feeling unfairly taxed, are organizing a push to redistrict the area into the .

The landowners in question, on 102 parcels in the village's western corner, are subject to a school tax rate nearly three times what fellow village residents, who fall into the Southampton School District, are subject to.

That combined with village taxes — which don't apply to the majority of Tuckahoe's 500-student district — raises what organizer William Dalsimer called a question "of fairness, one of boundaries." Southampton Village is the only village in the state that isn't in one school district, he said.

He and the three other members of Citizens for a Sane School District and School Tax Policy hope that residents' combined efforts obtaining petition signatures and researching applicable laws and data will convince the two district school boards to work out a way to transfer the land, whose taxes comprise about 3 percent of Tuckahoe's annual budget, without simply depriving the district of that $507,000 in revenue.

Members of the group — also called "Citizens for Change" because its preferred name was too long to fit on a PO Box — discussed possible redistricting scenarios with about 20 other residents who attended a preliminary meeting, along with Tuckahoe School Board Chairman Robert Grisnik, Aug. 24 at .

"It comes down to: how can we help Tuckahoe not to lose anything?" organizer Marilyn Fitzgerald said.

Attendees discussed solutions like lowering the fee Southampton charges for Tuckahoe students who matriculate at the high school after aging out of their home district's pre-K through eighth grade facility or adding another parcel into the district to compensate for the removal.

Any change would require the approval of both school boards. Meeting attendees decided to have petitions requesting the change ready to submit to the two bodies by Labor Day weekend.