Micron officials say the tree clearing process at the White Pine Commerce Park site in Clay has been completed, something that paves the way for the next phase of construction, which includes grubbing, leveling, and mass excavation.
While it’s just the first step of many, it brings the project that much closer to fruition, much to the delight of local school districts.
Central Square Central School District, for example, is about 10 miles from the planned site, and is looking forward to the growth Micron is promising.
The project could create more than 50,000 new jobs and bring thousands of people to upstate New York — something that can change the economic trajectory of the region.
“It’s gonna be wonderful for this community to see the numbers start coming back up,” Superintendent Thomas Colabufo said. “When those numbers come, so does more aid from the state and so does more taxable property income that would then come to our school district.”
Colabufo says the district expects its enrollment to grow from about 3,500 students to at least 7,000.
“We looked at Boise and we looked at Manassas, Virginia, where the other two Micron locations are and their enrollment almost doubled as a result of Micron,” Colabufo explained.
More students means more of just about everything else: more classrooms, more teachers, more transportation, etc., but Colabufo says the district can’t start preparing for that growth yet.
“We don’t have the money right now to say hey, let’s start building on,” the superintendent explained. “We can’t do that until the state says we understand that there will be a huge need.”
The district’s budget has declined over the past decade or so, something Colabufo says is because of enrollment.
“The problem is, our district about 15 years ago had about 2,500 more students,” he explained.
Colabufo says the district has a budget of $110 million with $8 million in reserves. State aid makes up for 60% of that, and a 2.9% tax levy takes care of the rest. They still have $2 million to cut.
Until more students start to roll in, they’ll have to shift some things around.
“We’re gonna have to do some combining of things, right?” Colabufo said. “We have some great programs, we won’t be able to afford advisors, school teachers, to pay them after school to put in those long hours, so some of those clubs will go away.”
The superintendent says, despite those cuts, they’re still building out the programs they have to prepare students to be successful Micron applicants in the future.
“Instructionally, we’ve been looking at our programs that we have here, our technology programs, possible micro-credentialing to really put our students in the best possible situation to be able to get those jobs,” Colabufo said.
Though the district will have to keep crunching numbers for now, Colabufo says he thinks the growth Micron will bring to the region will help pad their purse in as little as three years.