East Rockaway schools consider Princeton Plan

The East Rockaway School District is studying a redistricting plan that would group its elementary students by grade rather than by location. A data analyst was hired by the district this month to begin the process.

“He will present [his findings] to see if it’s doable, and will consider the facilities and staffing as well, said Superintendent Roseanne Melucci. “We just started [last] week.”

The Princeton Plan — or “grade clustering,” as it is sometimes known — has been implemented in other small districts in Nassau County, including East Williston, Oyster Bay, Carle Place and, most recently, Levittown and Malverne.

“There are different versions of the plan,” said Malverne Deputy Superintendent Richard Bunyon. “We used to have two elementary schools, kindergarten through fourth grade and a middle school fifth through eighth grade.” In September 2010, Bunyon said, his district initiated the new plan. There is now one primary building for kindergarten through second grade, an intermediate school for third- and fourth-graders and a middle school for fifth- through eighth-graders. (Next year, fifth grade will be added to the intermediate school and removed from the middle school after construction is finished at the intermediate school.) “The reason we did not add fifth grade [this year] is more classrooms were needed,” Bunyon said. A bond will fund the construction.

East Rockaway is the smallest school district in Nassau County, with an enrollment of fewer than 2,000 students. The village has two elementary schools — Centre Avenue, north of Main Street, and Rhame Avenue, south of Main. Residents of Bay Park attend Rhame Avenue. Both buildings house kindergarten through sixth-grade classes. The Junior/Senior high school, on Ocean Avenue, includes seventh and eighth grades (which use just one wing of the school for most of their classes) as well as the high school grades.