By JOSEPH KELLARD
Every five years since the 1967-68 school year, Island Park schools have signed an agreement to send their students to West Hempstead High School, and the latest five-year contract is set to expire in June. With the prospect that Island Park students may be sent on to either West Hempstead or Long Beach, the developing subplots include whether the school boards or the community, by way of a public vote, will decide the fate of the students, and whether Island Park and Long Beach students can peacefully coexist.
The issue of a public vote came up when the Island Park Board of Education and administrators met with and provided information about both high schools to the Island Park High School Study Committee on Oct. 2.
Each time the five-year contract is about to expire, the Island Park district forms a committee of parents to review the status of its high school students. At the Oct. 2 meeting, Superintendent Dr. Ed Price and school board President Diana Caracciolo said that while the school board favors a public vote, the Long Beach school board indicated that if that route were taken, it would withdraw as a candidate.
Last week, however, Long Beach school board President Frank Alvarado said his board has not closed the door on a public vote, noting that it is still gathering information on the issue, and that the board will likely dedicate a session to it at its meeting next Tuesday.
³If we had to go to a vote, we¹d have to think about it differently,² Alvarado said. ³Š We¹ll put that request as part of the community input to see how the community feels.²
Alvarado also confirmed what both Caracciolo and fellow Island Park school board Trustee Mike Hastava told the committee: that Long Beach¹s view is that just a small segment of the population votes, and a vote on the matter would not accurately reflect the collective opinion of the community.
Terry Keon, whose 11-year-old daughter attends Lincoln Orens Middle School, questions the rationale of this view. ³That¹s that same thing with everything ‹ the budget, school board elections, presidential elections,² Keon said. ³People have gotten so sick and tired of what¹s going on, they feel their vote doesn¹t matter. But when you say you want to send my kids to Long Beach and I don¹t want to send them there, I can pretty much guarantee you that there¹s going to be a large turnout for that vote.²
Peter Zarba, whose wife, Molly, is a member of Island Park¹s committee, favors letting the board have the final say, arguing that parents have the opportunity to express themselves at various board and committee meetings. ³People did have a chance to vote when they elected their school board officials,² Zarba said.
At the Oct. 2 meeting, Caracciolo and Price instructed parents and faculty to review the packets of data in various categories ‹ from Regents and A.P. results to violent/disruptive incident reports, to lists of clubs, activities and sports ‹ that were gathered about both high schools. The committee will present the pros and cons of both schools to the board at its meeting at the Conference Center on Radcliffe Road on Nov. 5 at 7 p.m.
Responding to one of many questions that will serve as guidelines for parents as they tour and evaluate the two schools this week, ³How do the students interact?² one parent stated, ³Island Park and Long Beach kids don¹t get along.²
Some Island Park students from West Hempstead High School who attended the meeting were ready to urge that students from their town stay put. Among them was Nick Bitetto, a sophomore at WHHS who said he would not want his younger brother to go to LBHS. ³Island Park kids always have problems with Long Beach,² Bitetto told the Herald. ³At West Hempstead, everyone is friends. There are never any fights.²
Alvarado said that there is much more to the relationship between the children in the neighboring towns. He and Caracciolo pointed out that Island Park and Long Beach have many ties, including kids who play together in sports leagues and after-school activities. ³We think there is a great opportunity here to solidify these ties if both communities and boards feel it can work,² Alvarado said. ³ ... Initially, our reaction was, the only way we can make this work is if both communities feel we can make that integration.²
Caracciolo said her husband, who grew up in Island Park 40 years ago, recalled the kids of both towns didn¹t mix well then. ³But I don¹t know if that is actually true now,² she said. ³I can¹t say, because I have no facts about if there¹s fighting or rivalries still.²
Zarba lived in Long Beach for 10 years before he and his wife moved to Island Park when their twins were born eight years ago. ³There were good and bad kids, smart ones and slow ones,² he said about Long Beach. ³If our district decides on Long Beach, the two communities will eventually grow together, just like Island Park and West Hempstead. I don¹t see that this is going to be a long-term problem.²
Keon said his greatest concern is security at LBHS, citing data from a state report listing more incidents there than at WHHS. ³The Long Beach High School is actually on Lido property,² Keon said. ³Lido has one police car. If, God forbid, something happens over there, how long will it take for police to get there?²
Sending Island Park students to Long Beach is not a new idea. Every five years, Island Park mails letters to neighboring school districts to see who is interested in enrolling its students. The district mailed letters in May to 12 districts, including Lynbrook, Rockville Centre and East Rockaway, but, as usual, only Long Beach and West Hempstead showed any interest.
Caracciolo said that in 1997, many parents showed interest in Long Beach, but in 2002 there was much less interest.
While the Island Park school board and administrators will not publicly comment on whether they favor one school over the other, Price and Caracciolo both said that the board is striving to be fair in its deliberations. ³I¹m sure everyone has some certain preference,² Price said, ³but I think each one of our board members is going into this process with an open mind.²
Said Caracciolo, ³Academically, I know that our children would be fine in both places. It¹s a matter of the kids mixing. It¹s going to be a big transition if we do change. We have parents that are scared, and I can¹t blame them.²
Hoping to keep the current arrangement intact, West Hempstead Superintendent John Hogan and the school board president went so far as to write a letter to the community in which they stated that they wanted Island Park students to stay at WHHS. ³I think any time you can combine communities as these two have been combined for 40 years, I think it¹s advantageous to everybody,² Hogan told the Herald. ³I don¹t think we see them as a separate entity anymore. They¹ve been here for so long, they¹re really all West Hempstead High School students. It¹s almost like losing a part of yourself if you lose those boys and girls.²
About 310 Island Park children are enrolled at WHHS, which has a student body of roughly 1,000, and Hogan said that their potential departure next year could affect everything from athletics to the budget. ³We would have to review our programs and staffing, for sure,² Hogan said.
Jennifer Koelbel of West Hempstead, a junior at WHHS and a member of the girls¹ varsity volleyball team, said that losing Island Park kids would have a negative impact. ³They make up half our sports programs, so that will have a really bad effect on our school and reputation,² Koelbel said. ³Our going from Conference A and being number one in the county is going to go down to Conference B when they¹re gone.²
In budgetary terms, Island Park pays roughly $4.5 million per year in tuition to West Hempstead, and if its students were moved to Long Beach, West Hempstead would make up some of the loss through decreased expenses, but the district would still lose about $1.5 million per year over the next three years, according to Hogan.
Long Beach High School enrolls about 1,400 students, but based on the district¹s projections, the high school population would actually fall despite the additional incremental enrollment of about 300 to 350 Island Park students over the next four to five years, according to Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg. The new students would not significantly impact the school budget, Greenberg said.
³While it might have a modest budget impact, because we might have to spend more money for additional costs,² Greenberg said, ³it would be offset by an increase in tuition reimbursement received from Island Park. And it would not have an impact on the tax levy. If it did, we would not consider it.²
Parents have highlighted other issues that are most important to them if they send their children to Long Beach, including transportation. Chris Zaharias, whose daughter Angelina, an Island Park sophomore at WHHS, said the bus ride to West Hempstead takes its toll on her. She¹s up at 6:15 a.m. to catch a 7 a.m. bus that sometimes gets to school 40 minutes later.
³It kills her sleep time and makes her a little more exhausted than usual,² said Zaharias, whose other daughter attends Lincoln Orens Middle School. ³It¹s a big strain on the kids, and it¹s a big hassle sending them there.²
Keon, however, doesn¹t believe that going to Long Beach necessarily means that the time Island Park kids spend on buses would be reduced. ³The schedule might turn out to be that all the Long Beach kids get dropped off first,² he said.
Touching on another issue, Zarba said that he has friends in West Hempstead who are concerned about what the area¹s growing Orthodox Jewish population may mean for the school district. He pointed to Lawrence, where Orthodox children attend private schools, yet their parents sit on the school board and make decisions about the education of public-school children, an issue that has become quite contentious in Lawrence. ³The budgets are also always voted down there,² said Zarba of the Lawrence school district, which has had trouble passing a spending plan since 2002.
Asked to comment on this concern, Hogan said, ³All I can say is that the entire West Hempstead community has always been very supportive of the school district, and that includes all groups.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
