Effective Monday, Nov. 4, Monticello Central School District’s administrative offices will operate in a new location at 60 Jefferson Street, Suite 3, in the village of Monticello. The move is in response to an abundance of health, safety and accessibility concerns at the current offices, located at 237 Forestburgh Road. These include issues with the sewage systems, moisture and air quality, in addition to challenges posed by the building’s design as a residential house. The layout of the building, which spans four floors, is difficult for guests and employees with limited mobility to navigate.
“Like all of our buildings, the “white house” has fallen into significant disrepair over the years,” Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. William Silver said. “Unlike all of our operating buildings, central office has no upcoming capital improvement work to allay the most pressing concerns.”
In its early capital improvement discussions, the district decided to forgo repairs at the existing central office building, in favor of rehabilitating the St. John Street Education Center with the intention of moving central offices there and renting office space in the interim.
“With the bond’s recent defeat, the board and the district’s leadership team have many decisions to make in the upcoming weeks in terms of our next steps forward to meet our goal of ensuring that all of our builds are safe, structurally-sound and conducive to learning, teaching and working in 21st-century settings,” Dr. Silver said. “We will certainly continue to update the public as those decisions are reached.”
Although the district had considered moving its offices to the St. John Street location despite the recent defeat of its proposed capital bond, it found renting office space to be a more cost-effective short-term solution. The cost to make the necessary alterations at the St. John Street property without the aid benefits of a capital improvement project would be greater than the cost of renting office property temporarily. It would also incur the added expense of needing to move offices twice, if a bond to make necessary repairs at the St. John Street building is passed in the future.
The district expects to use the Forestburgh Road building in the immediate future for storage, and potentially as a staging area for the upcoming Classroom 2020 projects scheduled to begin in the summer of 2020.
The district does not expect any interruption to public services as a result of this move. Central office staff will begin to transition into the new location in the last week of October, and will be fully operating out of the Jefferson Street location by Monday, Nov. 4. Other than the physical location, all contact information for central office staff members will remain the same, including phone numbers, individual extensions and email addresses.
While any correspondence mailed to the Forestburgh Road address will be re-routed to the new office, please be sure to mail all future correspondence to the address below to expedite service, effective Nov. 4:
MCSD Administrative Offices
60 Jefferson Street, Suite 3
Monticello, New York 12701