Katonah-Lewisboro School District Welcomes Dr. Blanch

CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - In his first public remarks since being announced as the Katonah-Lewisboro School District’s next superintendent, Dr. Raymond Blanch has promised to prepare students for “whatever challenges will come their way.”

“Wherever they decide to go, whatever the pathways they lead, they must be prepared to find the next best opportunity going forward,” he told the school board’s June 20 meeting. Moments earlier, the board had voted unanimously to name him KLSD’s superintendent of schools, the same post he’s held since 2011 in neighboring Somers. “I’m just so excited to come to Katonah,” he said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE FREE TAPINTO.NET NEWSLETTER

As the district prepares for a July 15 changing of the guard, Blanch spoke from the public’s lectern. Across the room, the man he will succeed, Andrew Selesnick, sat at the school board table, a spot he’s occupied for the past nine years.

“The board has made an excellent choice,” Selesnick said of Blanch’s appointment. “Ray and I have worked closely for nine years at our local Chief School Administrators meetings. I know he will take the work we have done here and move it forward.”

School Board President Julia Hadlock said Blanch had impressed the board “by his care for students, and his insistence on having student voice be part of the decisions that happen in a district.”

“His vision is inclusive,” Hadlock said, “giving all students, throughout their education, opportunities to explore what they can do and how far they can go.”

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TAPINTO APP FOR MORE LOCAL NEWS. AVAILABLE IN THE APPLE STORE AND THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE .

Before its Thursday evening meeting, the board hosted Blanch and his wife, Suzanne, at a reception.

Selesnick, who joined KLSD as superintendent in July 2015 after 23 years in Chappaqua schools, announced in January that he would retire at school year’s end. He will step down July 12 and in August become executive director of the Tri-State Consortium. The consortium, an alliance of some 50 high-performing metro-area school districts, half of them in Westchester, provides peer reviews of member districts’ performance.

Wrecking Ball at Shady Lane?

KLSD’s former headquarters on Shady Lane in South Salem should be demolished and its land preserved for future educational pursuits, a school board advisory committee recommends.

Once the rundown building has been razed, the property, just off Smith Ridge Road, could be kept in its natural state for elementary school field trips, provide expansion for nearby Meadow Pond Elementary School or, with a rezoning, become the site of a future school, Trustee Lorraine Gallagher, a committee member, told the school board’s June 20 meeting.

The 13-member committee of KLSD administrators, board trustees and district residents is also weighing the fate of Lewisboro Elementary School, a community fixture for almost 85 years but closed as a school a decade ago. For now, the Town of Lewisboro is a tenant, paying rent to the school district for office space and meeting accommodations.

While the wrecking ball could erase Shady Lane’s wood frame structure for about $325,000, Gallagher said, a demolition of LES would cost a million dollars or more. “Selling the land will require expenditure in the seven digits,” she told the board.

Among the options open to the board, Gallagher said, was leaving LES “as it is today,” providing space for multiple Lewisboro town agencies, including the police department, justice court, assessor’s office and planning and zoning departments.

Other potential uses for the land alone include becoming a natural environmental locale or a building site for either universal pre-K or solar arrays. Some of the building, which includes a gym built in 2003, could also serve as a sports complex.

In January, in calling for an assessment of the Shady Lane and LES properties, school board President Julia Hadlock clearly made their aging buildings a target. “We’re not talking about the divesting of either of the properties these buildings are on,” she told the board then. “We’re really talking about the structures that are on them.”

For more local news, visit TAPinto.net