Baldwin schools to stay closed through June

There’s a lot of good energy in this town, and we’re going to get through this.”

Tom Smyth, Board of Education trustee

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New York schools, including the Baldwin School District, are to remain closed for the rest of the school year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last Friday. School officials are planning accordingly. 

“Schools are complex organizations, and we need to have enough time, direction and guidance in order to make good decisions,” Superintendent Dr. Shari Camhi said. “Our faculty and staff have done an outstanding job moving learning to an e-learning platform. I’m confident in their successful implementation and grateful to our students and their parents for their unwavering support.”

The district has for the past three weeks worked under the belief that schools would not open for the remainder of the school year, Camhi said during a virtual Board of Education meeting on April 22, and mapped out the future. Staff members and administrators have discussed how to approach the graduating classes, return items in lockers and desks to students, and collect textbooks, graphic calculators, instruments and uniforms.

Baldwin officials are also planning for September. “I would love to believe that September will look like September looked this past year,” Camhi said, “but I think we need to hope for the best and plan for the worst.”

The district is planning for three scenarios: schools opening as usual, schools not opening or a combination of both.

“Of course, I’m sad for our high school seniors,” Camhi said. “This is not how they expected their senior year of high school to end. I’m sure we will celebrate their accomplishments and successes with a great send-off, albeit different from what they expected.”

School officials are discussing how to culminate students’ 13 years in Baldwin in a way that is celebratory and does justice to their time in Baldwin, Camhi said, “knowing full well that we are not going to be able to have a regular graduation — not at this point, unless something changes drastically.”

Baldwin High School Principal Dr. Neil Testa has spoken with students, and school staff have reached out to companies to think of creative ways to celebrate. Camhi encouraged community members to reach out if they have ideas.

“We will figure out what’s best for our kids and do our best for them,” she said.

Overall, everyone in the school system has worked extraordinarily hard, Camhi said, to get to the point where it is now.

“We were able to, literally, with the flip of a switch, go from live instruction to remote e-learning with barely a hiccup,” she said, thanking teachers, administrators, custodians and clerical staff.

The district, she added, has not experienced direct tragedies, but the surrounding community has, and “the compassion that our school community and the wider community in Baldwin has shown toward the people that are part of this system has just been unbelievable.”

In terms of end-of-the-year assessments, Camhi said the district will not substitute Regents exams for final exams. School officials are instead considering “authentic performance assessments,” which they have been trying to get the state to recognize as viable graduation requirements. As soon as officials figure out a solution, they will communicate it to students and parents.

Additionally, the state has not yet released a date for the budget vote and trustees election. School officials will move forward with the $138 million budget that was adopted on March 11.

“We are hoping that there will be a stimulus package that helps offset a reduction in state aid,” Camhi said, “but we know that as of the current moment, the number that has been floated out to us is a reduction of 20 percent of state aid, which would really be devastating for a district like ours.”

The district will also be affected by the announcement by the Baumann Bus Company, one of Long Island’s largest school bus companies, that it is going out of business. The company, which the Baldwin district has used to contract its buses, had let employees go for weeks as school districts closed and Baumann was not receiving pay from some districts.


The district “utilizes the services of multiple transportation contractors to meet the needs of all students,” school officials said in a statement. “As a result of Baumann Bus company going out of business, our district has already begun to consider all of our transportation options. As always, we will keep the best interest of our students and their families in mind. We will continue to exercise all of the resources at our disposal and fully anticipate having the needed transportation services in place for the 2020-2021 school year."

“This is now a legal matter," Camhi wrote in a May 1 letter to the community, "but rest assured, we are already working on it."

At the virtual board meeting, trustees thanked Camhi and other district officials and administrators. 

“I would just like to say thank you for everybody’s very hard work in these difficult times,” Trustee Sue Cools said. “I feel like you were, as always, ahead of it before it even really started to happen, and it made a big difference, and so just a heartfelt thank you to all of you.”

“This is really a time to be grateful and to say thank you to all as a district, and we will get through this,” school board President Annie Doresca said. “We’re standing together through this difficult time, but we’re doing a great job as a district, and we should all be very proud of ourselves.”

“You guys are doing an amazing job in an unimaginable situation,” Trustee Tom Smyth said, adding that he attended one of the district’s car parades. “It was just a great feeling to be out there with the community and see a lot of parents. There’s a lot of good energy in this town, and we’re going to get through this.”

“This is not an easy situation, but the fact that everybody is working together to do the best they can in servitude of our students, I greatly appreciate it on a personal level,” Trustee Karyn Reid said, adding that the car parades are great for community spirit.

Doresca, who also attended the parades, said she became emotional when she saw the students.

“You can see how everyone really misses each other, and I got all teary-eyed,” she said. “You realize this is really a family — this is an extended family. Hopefully we will reunite and be able to hug each other again.”