School(s) out?

The Baldwin Board of Education held its Community Input Meeting in the auditorium at the Middle School on Jan. 25. The gathering featured a long-awaited report from the district’s Facilities Review Task Force and an opportunity for residents to express their feelings to the board. The board’s role at input meetings is to take the temperature of the community, and after the task force recommended closing two schools, that temperature was

decidedly frosty.

The task force was formed at an October Board of Ed meeting and asked to “gather information on the capacity of all the district’s elementary school buildings and how to best maximize their efficient use.” After touring schools and examining Americans with Disabilities compliances, transportation logistics and other factors, the task force delivered its findings last week.

Facing an auditorium packed with parents wearing red shirts, holding signs and sporting white buttons urging the district to keep schools open, task force co-chair Ben Elias read his group’s conclusions. “Based on a majority vote,” Elias read, “to increase the efficient use of the elementary schools, two elementary buildings should be closed. After careful discussion and consideration, the task force recommends that the board consider closing Shubert and Milburn or Shubert and Steele.” The announcement was met with a grim silence from the crowd followed by scattered, shocked protestations.

The dire financial situation facing school districts across Long Island is well documented, and Baldwin’s predicted budget deficit of $4 million was exacerbated last month when Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal yanked away an additional half million dollars in anticipated funding.

Declines in both money and in enrollment have already brought about school closures in Lindenhurst and Mineola. North Bellmore and West Islip have voted to close schools in June, and even the Diocese of Rockville Centre has announced plans to shutter six Catholic elementary schools over the summer.