By LARRY MAIER
The mandate came after last week's Board of Regents meetings in Albany where a report on the Roosevelt district submitted by a three-person District Review Panel highlighted significant failings of the current school board.
In the weeks before the Dec. 19-20 meetings, state education officials had said that they would consider ousting the school board and beginning legal proceedings to dissolve the district. In that case, Roosevelt students could be sent to surrounding districts such as Bellmore-Merrick, East Meadow and Baldwin.
However, based on recommendations from the Review Panel, the current school board was given one more opportunity to maintain control of the district.
Whether the Roosevelt board will follow the education commissioner's instructions is anyone's guess. At their Dec. 17 meeting, the school board rejected the superintendent's request to cut $3.5 million in the budget; abolish 72 staff positions, including 36 teachers; and eliminate the district's athletics, occupational-education, teenage pregnancy, mother-child and library-automation programs. State budget cuts would also cost the district its kindergarten program.
Roosevelt board members have said in the past that they are in a "Catch-22." Cutting programs and staff might be fiscally sound, they said, but it would eliminate or cripple many district services to students. By making no cuts, however, the board risks dissolution by a state ouster and education department takeover of the district.
A state education spokesman said last week that the Board of Regents and commissioner's office also discussed at the meetings what options might be available in the future for Roosevelt students, including distributing students to neighboring districts if the state broke up Roosevelt.
SH: Review panel findings
The District Review Panel's report highlighted several areas in which the Roosevelt School Board has not met state expectations.
According to the report, the board has neglected building-maintenance issues, including failure to apply for grant money available to it for repairs, which has led to major structural problems in several buildings, particularly the Ulysses Byas Elementary School. Also, the report said that the board failed to properly pursue other grant dollars and federal aid money available to the district and improperly spent other grant dollars on trips to Florida, the Baltimore Aquarium, flowers, office renovations and football banners.
The report also criticizes many of the district's fiscal and administrative practices and said that the district significantly underreported its dropout rate to avoid more state reprimands. Also, the report said that, despite state instructions, the board has not yet hired a technology director to implement the use of 200 new computers now stored in the basement of the Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School.
