Harriet Eisman School fights for funding

“Phil has had a hard time in school his entire life,” Christine Nolan said of her 18-year-old son, who attended Mepham High School in Bellmore before he transferred to the Harriet Eisman Community School in Long Beach. “It got to the point where he was ready to quit … and he decided that [the Eisman School] was a place for him to start over.”

These days, Phil Nolan looks forward to going to school, is doing well on his tests and is set to graduate in August. “I just see a different kid, with this attitude about going to school and working with the people over there, and a level of maturity that has come from that,” his mother said. “I couldn’t be happier with his progress.”

But now, after 40 years, the Eisman School may be forced to close: The school lost its funding on July 5.

In June, Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano informed 43 private youth agencies — as well as 15 mental-health and addiction-treatment agencies — that receive annual county contracts for services that their funding would be eliminated in July. Mangano said that the agencies could avoid the cuts if they could persuade three Democratic lawmakers to side with the County Legislature’s 10 Republicans to approve a measure to borrow $41 million to pay the county’s tax-certiorari debts.

But Democrats insist that they will not approve any bonding measure unless Republicans agree to a redistricting plan that includes public hearings before the Legislature votes in 2013 on a final redistricting map, which could determine the outcome of legislative elections for the next decade. Democrats have charged that the map proposed by Republicans in 2011 would gerrymander Democrats out of at least two seats in the Legislature and ensure Republicans control of it.

In the meantime, the Eisman School and other agencies have been rallying against the cuts. On July 6, students gathered to protest Mangano’s plan at a rally in Mineola.