Lynbrook High School may be expanded, say officials

Students at Lynbrook High School may soon have a bigger space in which to learn, as the Board of Education announced last week they would be exploring the possibility of expanding the high school building by as much as 35,000 square feet.

“The board is assessing the needs of the district and seeing what needs to be done to all of the buildings in our district,” said Allen Scotto, director of facilities for the Lynbrook Union Free School District. “This project is still very much in the exploratory stage. We need to assess what needs we feel we have see how we can fill them.”

The current proposal being explored calls for a 35,000 square foot expansion of the high school. District administrators say this would help provide needed additional classroom space, while also freeing up currently occupied spaces to create more useful instructional and storage areas. The plan would also include new high school science lab rooms, the installation of air conditioning in all elementary school gymnasiums, boiler upgrades at each middle school, the installation of elevators at Marion Street and Waverly Park Schools, and window replacements at the Kindergarten Center.

Dr. Melissa Burak, superintendent of Lynbrook Public Schools, said a spike in student population didn’t cause the planned addition. “The project serves to answer curriculum changes and not necessarily enrollment changes,” Burak said. “We currently have inadequate classroom space for our three music areas. In addition, we do not have an auditorium where students can perform properly for the community. They play in a gym, which is not acoustically sound, and when there are sports that also need to take place, something is cancelled in order to accommodate whatever is the most timely event at that moment. It creates a logistical issue every winter and spring.”