ROSCOE — Make your voices heard! Both the Livingston Manor and Roscoe School Boards voted in favor of merging their respective school districts on Monday night, or rather they approved putting the issue up for a vote within the communities. 

The Castallo & Silky LLC consultants put the study together, sent it off to the New York State Education Department for approval and, once it returned, it was time to begin the voting process. 

The first step of the process for the Livingston Manor and Roscoe Central School Districts was for each school board to vote to approve the merger vote to be passed to the communities. Now the proposal will be voted on by residents of each district in an advisory referendum, or “straw poll,” on Wednesday, October 26.

The advisory referendum is not the final step, however, as if both communities pass the vote later this month, a second vote, the binding referendum, will be scheduled for December. The latter would be the official vote to merge the two districts, but to make it that far, both communities would need to pass the advisory referendum first.

Community members in both districts will receive a mailer containing more information about the merger. In the meantime, residents can read up on all the past meetings and available information on either school website’s dedicated merger study pages. 

The vote on October 26 will be held in each school district’s gymnasium and community members will be eligible to vote from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.

On the ballot, the question that residents will consider is:

“Should the Roscoe Central School District and the Livingston Manor Central School District be joined together as a single district by centralization [merger]?”

Livingston Manor will have a public forum session at the board meeting on October 19 at 6 p.m.

On the eve of the advisory referendum vote (October 25 at 4:30 p.m in Roscoe) there will be a public forum session at the board meeting, allowing members of the community to get answers to questions that they might have regarding the potential merger and the study that was conducted.