Frontier board prioritizes Family Support Center, schedules workshop to refine plan

The Frontier Central School District Board of Education on Dec. 17 directed its Community Education and Family Support committee to prioritize a Family Support Center and to schedule a workshop to develop a short list of initial services and cost estimates rather than issue a broad community survey.

Board members said the district faces several operational “big lifts” for the 2025–26 school year — including universal pre-K (UPK) and moving Big Picture to the Falcon Center — and that launching both a Family Support Center and a full Community Education program at once would stretch staff capacity.

The committee had proposed a second public survey to refine community priorities after an initial survey showed roughly two-thirds support for community education and one-third for family support. During the Dec. 17 discussion, board members debated whether the survey as drafted gave respondents enough context to make informed rankings. Several board members said a long, undifferentiated list would be unhelpful because each family-support service (for example, housing, food, legal aid, mental-health liaison, senior services) requires separate planning and provider conversations.

Instead the board agreed to a more targeted process: the committee will identify two or three top services to explore, meet with town partners and potential providers, return cost estimates and staffing plans to the board, and hold a workshop open to board members and key partners. The administration said a plausible startup budget ballpark for staffing and initial operations would be about $100,000 to $150,000 for the 2025–26 school year, and that full startup could slip into the 2025–26 school year depending on staffing and space availability.

At the meeting, board members emphasized the district’s primary responsibility to K–12 students and families when setting priorities. Several trustees supported starting with the Family Support Center because of reported local needs — including mental-health supports, food assistance and liaison services — and because some community-service functions appear better suited to town partners. The board asked the committee to coordinate with the Town of Hamburg and other providers to avoid duplicating services and to seek possible joint ventures where appropriate.

Next steps: trustees directed district staff and the committee to schedule the workshop, produce a short list of candidate services to pilot, and return to the board with high-level cost estimates and potential community/town partners. A board staff member said invitations for workshop dates would be distributed to trustees by the end of the work week following the meeting.

Why it matters: The board’s choice will determine whether the district invests administrative time and local funds into direct family-support programming or focuses first on expanding evening and enrichment programs under Community Education. Board members said the chosen path will shape staffing needs, potential space use (including coordination with the Falcon Center and Town of Hamburg facilities), and budget priorities during the district’s next budgeting cycle.