Monday, January 20, 2025
A revision to the New York State Department of Education’s Regionalization Initiative now states that the planning process would be voluntary, not mandatory, but school districts across Long Island, including Wantagh and Seaford, are still concerned about the plan’s scope.
The initiative, according to NYSED’s website, is “a collaborative regional planning approach for local districts to communicate what they need in order to address student needs and operational efficiencies.” It was introduced in September as an emergency rule to improve districts throughout New York, the website states, with the purpose of “expanding opportunities and closing transcript gaps consistent with Board of Regents priorities.”
Since the announcement of the initiative, districts and local officials across the state have pushed back, citing concerns over the plan’s lack of clarification and its potential effects on school districts’ autonomy.
At a Nov. 21 news conference at the Nassau County Executive building in Mineola, several elected officials decried the impact the plan could have on schools across the state. State Sen. Steve Rhoads said that local and state elected officials should have a voice in how school tax dollars are spent, especially on Long Island, where school taxes are among the highest in the state.
“The State Education Department’s self-created ‘emergency’ regionalization mandate is vague, confusing and can easily lead to a complete usurpation of local control of school budgets, tax dollars and educational opportunities and resources vested in local boards of education,” Rhoads said at the gathering.
At a Dec. 12 Board of Education meeting at Wantagh High School, Superintendent John McNamara voiced concerns about the district’s potential loss of resources as a result of the plan, and said that the district had sent several letters to the Education Department opposing it. Wantagh, he said, had joined other school districts in filing a legal challenge to the initiative.
Last month, the Education Department revised the initiative to allow districts to opt out of the planning process. According to the department’s website, “A school district may elect not to participate in the development of a regionalization plan.” If a district chooses not to participate, its superintendent — after consulting with the school board — must submit a letter to the department’s Office of Education Policy in Albany by Jan. 15, and “every ten years thereafter.”
In addition, the Dec. 6 deadline for the first step in the process, which required state districts to submit a “strengths and needs tool,” was extended to Jan. 15. As outlined by the department, the tool would require districts to provide data and analytics to the state to aid in the creation of mandated regionalization plans.
“The state did make some adjustments,” McNamara said at the December meeting, “and they have moved that ahead with some of those adjustments, but not as many as we would like to have seen.”
The Seaford Board of Education sent out a letter to the community on Nov. 27 detailing the plan. According to the letter, the plan would mandate that school districts participate in the merging of resources, programs and services — which districts already do on a voluntary basis, the letter added, with no involvement from the state. In addition, the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES, would have a supervisory role in the process, which, the letter stated, could infringe on the district’s autonomy.
According to the Education Department website, the Regionalization Initiative is not about reorganization, nor does it mandate that districts participate in particular activities under a regional plan, but will be a collaborative approach in which districts communicate what they need to address student’ needs.
“The outcomes and action items from regional planning conversations will vary from region to region,” the website states, “building upon the strengths inherent in local communities and reflecting innovative ideas from the individuals who live in them.”
At the Seaford district’s Dec. 11 school board of meeting at Seaford Manor Elementary School, board president Lisa Herbert said that the district would not submit the strength and needs tool, and approved a resolution to opt out of the planning process.
“We were waiting to see what the permanent rule was going to look like, and it looks like what we thought it was going to look like,” Herbert said at the meeting. “It is an opt-out of the planning process, not an opt-out of regionalization itself.”
The district’s prior objections and commentary on why it finds the plan problematic, Herbert added, remain: Trustees believe it could pose a threat to the administration’s ability to govern the district in a way that would be best for the student body.
At the Nov. 22 board meeting, trustees approved a resolution authorizing the district to initiate the legal challenge, known as an Article 78 proceeding, to the initiative.
