By JOSEPH KELLARD
Last month, the Board of Education announced its plan to close the city’s oldest school, but parents are circulating a petition and voicing their opposition to the district’s decision.
The board held a public work session on Dec. 3 to present its proposed $350 million master plan to repair, upgrade and consolidate district buildings and programs. That night, the board postponed a vote on a $98.9 million bond to fund the first phase, dubbed the “preservation plan,” two-thirds of which would revamp the district’s infrastructure and cover health and safety issues in the schools.
Regardless of the outcome of that vote, however, the board has decided to phase out East School, and consolidate its students and staff with the district’s three other elementary schools. “The fact is, we cannot continue to pay the money we pay, year in and year out, to maintain four schools when we don’t really need them,” said board member Frank Alvarado, who emphasized that the district’s enrollment is projected to decline by 800 students over the next 10 years.
The plan is to let the 320 students currently enrolled in kindergarten through fifth grade finish their elementary education at East School, then send future classes to the Lindell, Lido or West schools. This phase-out plan includes retaining East School staff, but that could change as enrollment declines.
The board contends that East School needs major work — renovations that would require brickwork and electrical repairs, at a cost of $3.5 million, and upgrades that would include expanding classrooms, at a cost of $38 million. Another option would be to demolish the building and construct a new three-story school, which would cost an estimated $55 million, or close the school and convert the building into an adult learning center and administration offices, at a cost of $3.5 million. The board opted for the last option.
“The proposal we’ve made on the $98.9 million bond opportunity,” Alvarado explained, “is that, given the trend in enrollment, given the fact that we need state money operationally going forward, given the fact that it would cost too much money for us to renovate the school to be a viable educational facility as a investment for the district and the students, we made a decision that we’re going to transition this school to a different use.”
Impact on taxes
If residents vote to approve the bond, the average homeowner would pay $19 more per month in school taxes. The board noted that the state would reimburse the district 40 percent of the cost of the bond. The master plan is projected to be completed in five to 10 years, depending on decisions made by future boards and a vote on the next phase.
But parents who are fighting to keep East School open handed the board a four-page response at the emotionally charged meeting, stating that the district “has not adequately explored all alternatives to the closing of East School, has not fully assessed the immediate impact of the consolidation into three elementary schools upon our children, and has not offered sufficient time to review this proposal with the East School parent community and surrounding residential community.”
Lisa McKay, a parent who authored a petition to block East School’s closing, said, “They want to put an administration in our school, but meanwhile they’ve got an entire empty floor in Lindell School where the administration can go. They’re not exploring all their opportunities.”
McKay said she and other parents believe that upgrading the 82-year-old school is unnecessary. “They keep saying we don’t have the money to upgrade the school, and we keep saying we don’t want those upgrades,” she said.
Another parent, Terrance O’Neill, noted that a report from the Facilities Advisory Committee, formed by the board in 2006 to make recommendations to improve and maintain long-neglected facilities, concluded that the proposal to expand classrooms is merely a recommendation, not a mandate. “What’s the worst solution?” O’Neill said. “Oh my God, you’ll have small class sizes. I don’t think that’s a horrible problem.”
O’Neill also echoed a concern several other parents voiced at the meeting: How did the district go from proposing a $350 million master plan at an Oct. 28 board meeting to a $98.9 million plan and a proposal to close East School on Nov. 12? “And I think that’s what has probably generated most of the emotion coming from the people at East,” he told the board.
Another parent, Annie Conway, asked the board, “How can the district decide to close East School without speaking expressly to the school community?”
Both school board President Patrick Gallagher and Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg pointed out the various meetings the district held with the public throughout the year in which the master plan was discussed, along with the possibility that East School might be closed. “There was specific phraseology used and conversations about the option of closing East School at the Envisioning Day forum in March,” Gallagher said.
He added that at the Oct. 28 meeting, the board went into detail about the $350 million proposal. “We made a decision that night that we could not come up with $350 million,” Gallagher said.
Greenberg said that it was because the board was so deliberate in making the decision that it took a while to come forward with it. “You may have thought it was coming, but when it comes, it’s not easy to accept,” he said.
Greenberg explained that after the Nov. 12 meeting, he asked the board to give community members more time to be heard and to announce its final decision in January. As a result, the board will vote to approve the bond proposal on Jan. 12, and must then wait at least 60 days before putting it up for a public vote. During those two months, the board will hold more talks with the community about the proposal.
Understanding, and determination
On Monday, a few parents met with Alvarado, Greenberg, the district’s hired architects and others to talk face to face.
Afterward, O’Neill, along with the East School PTA co-presidents and other parents, said they had a better understanding of their differences. “I think that the insights that we had last night really helped a long way with us to kind of come up with a solution,” O’Neill said.
Resident Marty Klain vowed to keep looking for a way to keep East School open, and he implored those who shared this goal to take advantage of the next few weeks, before the Jan. 14 school board meeting, to come up with educated and informed proposals to present to the board.
On Tuesday night, when parents addressed the board again at its regular meeting, however, others continued to question the board’s decision on East School, a few demanded that it be kept open, and couple of people vowed not to support the bond if East School was not part of it.
John Gilmore, whose son graduated from East School last year, complained that the board failed to provide information on the difference in cost between keeping the school open and closing it, and that the district’s Web site lacked cost figures and other information. “If you want us to go along with this, you really have to give us the appropriate information to make a decision, and I don’t think you’ve done that yet,” Gilmore said.
Another parent listed other issues she believes the board has failed to address, such as the impact closing East School would have on property values in the surrounding neighborhood.
Board Trustee Roy Lester called those questions premature. “We don’t know where we’re going yet because of the governor’s budget, because of the potential merger [between Island Park and Long Beach schools], because of a million different reasons out there,” Lester said. “ … Based on what’s happening in the state and in the local community, we are taking a wait-and-see approach.”
East School a landmark?
Another factor that may affect East School’s future is the Long Beach Island Landmarks Association’s pursuit of landmark status for the building. LBILA President Alexandra Karafinas said she is completing the necessary forms to get six Long Beach buildings placed on the national registry, including East School, which she plans to submit to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in January.
Karafinas said that Joe Ponte, an LBILA member (and a graduate of East School), proposed the idea and is spearheading the effort. “They said that because the outside of the school is so pristine, it would fit under landmark status,” Ponte said of state officials. “And they reviewed all the news articles about the school over 55 years, and because there were so many historical things done there, that also would make it a landmark.”
Ponte said that once the state grants a building landmark status, it is much more difficult to demolish the structure, a factor that could alter the school district’s long-term plans for East School.
“We were not thinking in terms of landmark status,” Gallagher said, “but we clearly were making the decision not to tear the building down. From our hearts, no doubt, one of those reasons was for the historical importance of the building.”
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
