As the Mineola School Board is poised to put an alternate $6.1 million bond proposal for elementary school consolidation on a February ballot, one board member is set to propose a more radical consolidation: a merger with the Herricks School District.
The thrashing district voters gave the $6.7 million “cluster” proposal that would have closed Meadow Drive in Albertson, Cross Street in Williston Park and Hampton Street in Mineola has raised doubts about whether the other bond proposition or the so-called default option will ultimately be acceptable to a majority of residents.
And at this week’s board meeting, board member John McGrath, who professes opposition to all defined consolidation options, said he will propose that the Mineola School District to explore a merger with the Herricks School District. The idea would both reduce costs and maintain the neighborhood elementary schools that so many district residents oppose closing, according to McGrath.
“By merging with Herricks and closing our middle school and high school, you could preserve our neighborhood schools as well,” McGrath said, enumerating an idea he speculated about on the school district’s website earlier this month. “The state will give you tons of money at extremely favorable interest rates to do this.”
McGrath estimates that shutting the middle school and high school would save $50 million – more than any of the school consolidation options offer – and would leave the same configuration of neighborhood schools. Mineola students would attend Herricks Middle School and Herricks High School, while some Herricks students could attend Mineola’s elementary schools.
McGrath and Irene Parrino voted against the putting up the bond proposal that failed and could be poised to vote against a February referendum on the alternate bond. They both joined in a chorus exhorting that the board slow the process down in the wake of last week’s decisive vote against the bond proposal.
“The voters just turned down a $6.7 million bond. I think it’s highly unlikely that they’ll approve a $6.1 million bond,” McGrath said.
He called the alternate bond vote “confusing” because it’s a two-part proposition involving approval of a $4.4 million bond to add eight classrooms, a common room and a bus loop to Jackson Avenue to situate grades 3 through 5 there, and a second proposition for a $1.7 million bond to add four classrooms for grades pre-K through 2 at Hampton Street. If both propositions were to pass, then Cross Street and Willis Avenue would be the schools to be shuttered.
The only reason some residents might vote for the bond proposition is to avoid the default option, according to McGrath, which would put fifth graders in the middle school and eighth graders in the high school, prospective changes that prompted some residents to oppose the initial bond option.
“Over time, some of the issues have become so exaggerated. The reasons for the consolidation are completely being ignored,” said Kathy Darmstadt, a member of the volunteer finance committee that analyzed the current options last summer. “I don’t see anybody offering an option that’s an alternative.”
The board took a decision to close two schools earlier this year as a savings strategy in the face of stagnant student enrollment. Under the remaining two options, Meadow Drive remains in the mix, satisfying residents who objected to Cross and Meadow – the district’s north side schools – both closing.
“There were people who felt [the $6.7 million bond] was too radical in terms of the number of buildings that were being closed. And there were people who were territorial about their buildings being closed,” said board vice president Christine Napolitano, who favors putting the alternate bond up for a vote.
Napolitano, Willilam Hornberger and board president Terence Hale are likely to remain united in favor of the $6.1 million bond option – the option favored by the Community Committee on Consolidation – which would save the district a projected $25 million over the next decade.
“At this point, the dialogue has to come to an end and we have to go forward,” Napolitano said. “You can go on with this conversation forever. We have to act.”
Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler is concerned that district voters think that voting against the bonds will halt the process.
“If they don’t like any of the choices, it’s still happening,” he said. “I don’t know how many people understand that we’re closing a building in 2011.”
But speaking to the Jackson Avenue PTA earlier this week, Nagler projected a scenario that could change everything.
“All you need is the board to change and somebody to say, ‘I don’t want to close a building’. That could happen,” Nagler said.
In May, Hornberger and Hale are up for re-election, and if they are unseated or choose not to run, a reconstituted school board could decide to reverse course, and abandon the seemingly irresistible logic that consolidation previously represented.
