Brewster Schools Remain Diligent About Residency

By Holly Crocco

The Brewster Central School District is continuing its efforts to make sure every student enrolled is one that lives within the district.

With about a third of the district’s 3,000 students belonging to families that rent or lease their homes, those families have to provide documentation each year verifying they still live at the address on record with the district.

“I believe that while we are far from perfect, we have worked to become a model in the region for how to protect the district’s resources in a compassionate way,” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michelle Gosh at the Aug. 12 Brewster School Board meeting.

From October 2024 to July of this year, the district’s residency office considerably reduced the number of students considered to live in a home with an “outstanding lease” from years past.

The number of students who still attend the district but live in a home with a lease that expired as of June 2023 and need to prove residency went from 17 to two (two families), the number of students who live in a home with a lease that expired between July and December 2023 went from 31 to six (six families), and the number of students who live in a home with a lease that expired in 2024 went from 536 to 153 (120 families).

The number of students who live in a home with a lease will expire this year totals 171 (129 families).

“This is not a linear process – sometimes it works out that way, but it’s complex and layered,” explained Gosh. “We are never going to be at zero with this work. Because of the number of students that lease… About 1,000 students are on this perpetual cycle. It’s never going to be zero, but we want to see the number decreasing over time, and that’s what we do see here.”

There are different ways the district works with families to verify residency, which the superintendent said are “communicative and flexible.”

When a family’s lease expiration date approaches, the district sends a letter to the family asking for proof that the lease has been extended or other residency has been secured. If there is no response, another letter is issued with the date of an in-person meeting that will be held if documentation cannot be provided.

“This is where our residency officer sits down with the family and asks them to provide that proof,” said Gosh, who noted that the process is time-consuming, and cyclical.

During this process residencies may be confirmed or it may be learned that students have moved or are otherwise no longer residents. If a family cannot prove residency, the district has the option to disenroll the student.

“It’s not like, if proof isn’t provided or it’s inadequate that we just turn away and say, OK, see you in another year or so,” explained Gosh. “We make sure we’re diligent and following the process.”

However, the burden of proof is on the district.

“If the families are nonresponsive to our requests, we can’t just disenroll them, even after a certain amount of time,” explained the superintendent. “Because we’re disenrolling them for ignoring us, not for not being able to prove they are residents.”

It’s these complexities that come along with individual cases that led the administration to ask the school board to come up with a task force to help dig into ways to improve the process. Gosh asked for two or three board members to volunteer to sit down with the staff who determine residency and discuss options.

“And maybe at the end of this task force we say, ‘No, we need to keep doing what we’re doing – keep your nose to the grindstone and continue,’ and if that’s the case, that’s fine,” said Gosh. “At least we could have some conversation about what we’ve learned and what possible changes we might want to recommend.”

School Board President Kerry Cunnigham noted that, of the 1,000 families that rent, many don’t even have formal written leases in place.

“It’s not just a matter of coming and showing a lease,” she said. “That makes it a little more difficult.”

Board member Scott Seaman said there needs to be some sort of termination qualifier, such as for the eight families that have been unconfirmed for more than two years.

“The last thing you want to do is turn a child away from school, but if we’ve tried definitively over these many times, when do we?” he asked.

Gosh said Brewster has gone above and beyond to try and work with families to make sure all students are residents and that they have access to the best education the district can provide.

“I don’t know of many districts that are as diligent as we are about the process,” she said.