Saving Roosevelt High School

State says closing troubled school and sending kids to other districts remains an option

      Reports that the state will decertify the failing Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School and send its students to the Baldwin, Bellmore-Merrick, East Meadow and Oceanside districts have swirled for the past six months, making people fearful and angry.
      Education Commissioner Richard Mills did little to relieve residents' concerns on Tuesday when he issued a report to the Board of Regents that keeps decertification as an option for Roosevelt High.
      People in and out of Roosevelt had hoped the commissioner would take that plan off the table.
      Mills did, however, add an option that would allow Roosevelt to remain whole. For this plan, the state Legislature would remove Roosevelt's school board this summer and take complete control of the district. Until now, the community has elected its own board under state supervision.
      According to an Education Department report, "The commissioner would assume all powers and duties of the board of education until appointment of a new board by the Board of Regents."
      The Regents would also hire all district administrators. In effect, the Education Department would manage Roosevelt from Albany.
      State Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr. (R-Merrick) said he is fighting hard to save Roosevelt High. The senator, who has met weekly with Commissioner Mills for several months, said, "I made it very clear I would not support closing [Roosevelt] down. I advised him that he has to go back and find other options to keep that school open."
      The senator added, "Closing down a school is an easy way out, and it's a bad precedent to set. It's an easy way for the state to solve the problem." Roosevelt needs stronger state intervention and financial aid, he said.

Subhead: Residents cry foul
      In 1996, the education department took over the Roosevelt district after charges of school-board incompetence were made and the high school's high failure rate on benchmark tests came to light.       
      Busing Roosevelt students to outside districts was seen as a last-ditch effort to educate them, as they have continued to fail important exams at an alarmingly high rate, including the Regents now required for graduation. Only 50 percent of Roosevelt students passed the 2000 English Regents, and just 29 percent scored above a 65 on the exam, which will be the passing score as of 2004.
      From the beginning, however, residents of Roosevelt and surrounding districts have decried the busing plan.
      "Closing the high school and shipping the kids to other schools would not work," said Robert Summerville, president of the Roosevelt-Freeport chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a retired New York City police officer.
      In the mostly white, middle-class surrounding districts, parents said an influx of Roosevelt students would cause overcrowding in their schools.
      In the minority, low-income Roosevelt district, parents said that ferrying students to other districts would waste valuable learning time and tax dollars, while destroying any pride residents might feel in their ailing school system.
       They also said Roosevelt students would be earmarked for special education in the other districts because they would be ill-prepared to compete academically.
      Diana Coleman, a long-time Roosevelt activist and health-plan administrator who has fought the breakup of Roosevelt High, said the school is no better off than it was in 1996, despite the five-year state takeover.
      "The state has acted like it's status quo over these five years. We're basically in the same position we were in before. Actually, worse, because our spirit has been broken," she said.
      Coleman said South Shore residents and educators must lobby the state to take charge of Roosevelt with a firm grip and provide the district with the money it needs to truly help students. Otherwise, the state could send Roosevelt students to other districts at any time.
      Breakup of the high school "will loom until we get serious," said Coleman. "Sometimes, it takes us all going to the edge of the cliff and looking over to understand we've all got to grab the rope and pull us back, and I think that's where we are."
      This week, the Herald examines the Roosevelt School District and its high school, which are wracked by austerity budgets, collapsing facilities, short-term administrations and violent gangs. The idea behind this article is to give readers a glimpse into Roosevelt to foster awareness and understanding of the complex issues surrounding it. We begin at the beginning, with the students.
      
Subhead: Gangs in control
      Roosevelt students say the biggest problem they face in high school is gangs.
      Thomas, a 15-year-old student who describes himself as a Christian, easily ticked off seven gangs at the high school: Mara Salvatrucha, reputedly Long Island's most violent gang, Latin Kings, Bloods, Crips, Lost Boys, BGF and LGF.
      Thomas said street fighting is common inside Roosevelt High. Just last week, an unidentified assailant fired four shots from a passing car into the school, authorities said. No one was hurt, but someone could have been, as the time was around 3:45 p.m., when the high school was still full of students.
       Thomas said, "It's bad. All these gangs cuttin', cuttin' people they don't know with blades, knives. The security guards don't do nothin'."
      He also said, "The teachers are teachin', but the kids keep talkin' back. They need to do something better with the school."
      Thomas hopes to become an engineer or doctor to help his mom "pay the rent."
      Chris, a 14-year-old member of Roosevelt's junior-varsity football team, at first said that gang fighting "wasn't that bad."
      Later, he said, "It's not just like they fight for the fun of it. If a Blood don't say nothin' to a Crip, there won't be no beef. Different gangs associate. As long as you don't throw up a sign or wear your color, your flag, there's no beef."
      If gang members wear their colors or show their signs, however, violence breaks out, Chris said. The teenager added that his hope for the future is "to stay out of the gangs."
      Only three months ago, a Roosevelt gang member was shot fatally during a turf battle off school grounds, said county Legis. Patrick Williams (D-Uniondale), who attended the young man's funeral. It was a matter of "somebody wearing the wrong colors, and an opposing gang saw them," he said.
      Williams, who recently convened a hearing on gang violence in the County Legislature, added, "We have certainly been in denial that there is anything such as gang activity in suburbia."
      The legislator noted that, because of Nassau's funding cuts for social services last year, Roosevelt lost its only youth center, which had provided mentoring, job training and psychological counseling. The county restored 50 percent of the cuts it made, which has returned some youth-center services for Roosevelt, but not all.
      "The county has a responsibility to fund after-school programs, any type of activity that will keep young people off the streets instead of the way it is now," Williams said.
      "We have cut those programs. ... The consequence is that you see more kids hanging out on the street. Most gang activity occurs between 3 to 7 p.m."
      Coleman believes stepped-up security is desperately needed at Roosevelt High, so students can learn without feeling constantly threatened by gangs.
      She said many students carry weapons in school because they fear for their safety. "Why are the kids responsible for their own protection?" she asked.
      "It should not be tolerated that kids should bring razors, that kids should bring guns and knives. But it's being tolerated."
      Gang violence is only the start of Roosevelt High's troubles, which date back more than three decades.

subhed: Destined for failure
      The American Civil Liberties Union is suing New York State, charging it has failed to live up to its "constitutional responsibility" to educate children in low-income communities, including Roosevelt, said Donald Schaffer, an ACLU attorney.
      The civil liberties union wants the state Education Department to take ultimate responsibility for fixing troubled schools in poor areas.
      In its research for the case, the ACLU discovered that as early as 1969, the Education Department predicted two Long Island school districts -- Roosevelt and Wyandanch -- weren't going to make it, said Schaffer.
      The department said in effect that these districts "are not going to be able to provide an education for the children in their areas. They are going to become poorer. They are going to become more educationally dysfunctional," according to Schaffer.
      "They are tiny. There is no commercial and industrial property to support school taxes. Inevitably, these districts will not be able to do the job."
      The department recommended redrawing Roosevelt district lines. A concrete plan apparently never developed from that proposal, however, said Schaffer.
      Today, Roosevelt is counted among Nassau's smaller school districts, measuring about one square mile and taking in almost 2,800 students, 90.5 percent of whom are African-American and 9.5 percent Hispanic, according to the Education Department.
      Roosevelt's commercial district is centered around Babylon Turnpike and Nassau Road, the community's main thoroughfares. It's a struggling, at points blighted, business zone, with only scattered small shops, fast-food restaurants, one supermarket, boarded-up offices and empty lots full of litter.
      Summerville, of the NAACP, said Roosevelt boasts 41 delis but few retail shops to bolster the business district and add character to the neighborhood.
      He also said that, at one time, the Town of Hempstead rezoned a section of Roosevelt's commercial district as residential and took properties by right of eminent domain to build affordable housing for low-income residents. As a result, the Roosevelt School District has lost millions in property-tax dollars. From 1992 to 1996 alone, Roosevelt fell short by an estimated $1.36 million, said Summerville, a former school-board president.
      During that same time -- when Roosevelt was placed on the state's Registration Review List before the takeover -- the district lost $3.9 million in state aid, Summerville said.
      This year, Roosevelt is losing $1.7 million and 123 students to a grade K-2 charter school, which is private but funded with property-tax dollars.
      As a result of all this, Roosevelt residents have seen school taxes rise dramatically over the years. They now pay among the highest in Nassau.
      Things could get significantly worse for Roosevelt residents. According to Tuesday's Education Department report, the district has exhausted its fund balance, and a 52-percent property-tax increase is needed to bring Roosevelt into the black.
      Currently, the Roosevelt district operates with an austerity budget, leaving the system with little money for tutorial programs needed to increase student performance.
      Even after the takeover, the state has not provided the funding Roosevelt needs, Schaffer said. "It was a takeover in form, but not really in terms of any substantive change," he said.
      The state, for example, had promised to have the dilapidated Roosevelt High repaired, but little work has been done there other than a paint job, Coleman said.
      "The school is still in disrepair. The floors are horrible. It's dirty. It's not kept. I'm sure there's an insect problem there. There's leakage in the classrooms when it rains. They have to put buckets to catch the rains. As far as facilities, what did they do?" she said.
      To date, the state has primarily issued recommendations for Roosevelt High School. It threw the board of education out of office and installed its own board in 1996. It also assembled the Roosevelt District Review Panel of education experts to develop a Corrective Action Plan for the high school, which the Education Department received in December 2000.
      The plan, submitted by Deputy Education Commissioner James Kadamus to the Board of Regents, recommends myriad changes for Roosevelt High, anything from updating and repairing the school's antiquated computers to writing entirely new curriculums.
      Effecting change in the high school, however, has proven difficult, owing to a leadership vacuum, community leaders say. According to Summerville, the district has seen seven superintendents, six assistant superintendents, seven business managers, five buildings-and-grounds managers, six high-school principals and two middle-school principals in the past five years.
      The Corrective Action Plan states, "With only a one-year interim appointment, the current superintendent is challenged in his effort to build focused, cohesive and competent administrative teams needed to ensure continuous improvement in student achievement."
      The Herald tried to speak with Superintendent Horace Williams, but he did not return phone calls.

Subhead: Hope for the future
      When Coleman was asked why she doesn't leave Roosevelt, she answered, "That's a question that's plagued me for quite some time. I don't believe you run away from a problem. There are a lot of people who refuse to leave, because there's a commitment to the community."
      She, however, worries what will happen to her 6-year-old granddaughter. Diana attends a Roosevelt elementary school, where she's safe and well-educated, said Coleman.
      The grandmother, however, recognizes that Diana would not be as safe or as well-educated in Roosevelt High. That is why she is fighting to revitalize the school.
      "With [Diana] being in the first grade, and knowing what's going on, if I don't make the corrections [to the high school] now, will she benefit? The answer is no," said Coleman.
      
      EDITORS NOTE: Names of students in this article have been changed to protect their identities.