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Mostly Cloudy New West Hempstead committee in the works
Focus will be on using empty areas at Chestnut Street, Eagle Avenue schools
The West Hempstead Board of Education is forming a Space Utilization Committee to garner public input on how the school district can use empty space at the Chestnut Street School — formerly home to the West Hempstead Public Library — and the Eagle Avenue School, which Nassau BOCES will be vacating in June 2013.
Discussion of forming a committee, Superintendent John Hogan said, began last summer. The idea was solidified over the past few months, and a formal announcement was made at an April 17 school board meeting.
Since then, Hogan explained, 10 residents have expressed an interest in joining the committee. He added that he anticipates that the board will decide on more of the details — such as the size of the group — before the end of June. It will be composed of residents and a few members of the board, he said.
“But they will focus on the space, and whether there are things we can do to make it attractive to potential renters or leasers,” Hogan said. “There’s going to be a significant amount of space — we want to get as many points of view as we can.”
The West Hempstead library moved to its current location, on Hempstead Avenue, during the 2007-08 school year, because it needed more space, Hogan said.
The Herald reported in February that declining enrollment is forcing Nassau BOCES to terminate its lease with the school district, and next year it will vacate the Eagle Avenue building it has occupied and used as a middle school for more than two decades. “It certainly is a concern,” Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham previously told the Herald, “because … this has been a source of revenue for the district.”
BOCES pays more than $500,000 in rent annually — income on which the district relies. School officials said that losing that revenue — especially when other sources, such as federal funding for Island Park students in West Hempstead High School, have decreased, state mandates have increased and a state property tax cap has been implemented — would pose a challenge to the district. With that in mind, Hogan said, a Space Utilization Committee became even more important.
“Both spaces carry potential for future revenue for us,” he said.
