Mineola Board of Ed Votes to Move Fifth, Eighth Grades if Bond Fails

The Mineola Board of Education authorized the district to go forward with a “default option” if the  fails, meaning that the fifth and eighth grade moving from their current buildings into the middle and high schools, respectively.

“This is what we will do if the bond fails,” Board President Terence Hale said during Thursday’s workshop session at the .

“We’re trying to reinforce that if people vote ‘no’ on the bonds their fifth and eighth graders are going to go to the  and the ,” Trustee John McGrath said, believing that the board was “accentuating” the potential of moving the grades.

“(It’s) what we’ve been discussing all along,” Hale said in response.

If the bond passes, the district would use the money to  onto . The Willis Avenue School would remain in its current configuration with pre-K and kindergarten in the building. The  would close in September and  and  would change to a grade 1 through 3 configuration. In September 2012, if construction at Jackson is complete, Willis Avenue would close.

While the motion to select the default option passed the board three-to-two with Trustees McGrath and Irene Parrino voting against, there were reports of numerous rumors floating about the district, including the appearance of a flyer received by the vast majority of district residents Monday.

“There’s rumors going around that if the bond failed that we’re going to come up with some other idea that we haven’t talked about, that we haven’t engaged the community in,” Board vice-President Christine Napolitano said. “I want people to understand that as far as respect that I think of the board to date this is the plan and there should be no doubt that if it fails, this is what comes next.”

Dr. Nagler gave a presentation to the various PTAs at the Jackson Avenue School Monday night, saying that the flyer “ties the bond together, it ties the budget together, it ties school board elections together.”

The anonymous flyer claims that the default “is not the only option” and that the board “can simply close one school giving it the opportunity to reassess its reconfiguration plan while keeping the tax levy as low as possible.” The flyer also calls for the election of new members to the school board who presumably could halt or reverse the reconfiguration. The seats currently held by Trustee William Hornberger and Hale are up for election in May.

A  before the October 2010 bond vote.

Nagler has stated that while closing one school does save money, it does not reap the maximum savings primarily due to personnel cuts.

“In those five short months, we’re changing children all over the place to set up this new configuration,” Nagler told parents Monday. “What does this mean? The entire budget is built on that.”

The 2011-12 budget includes changes to bus routes, start times and moving the furniture and other Cross Street furnishings and students into the other buildings, which require incredible logistics planning. Nagler stated that closing the library and moving the books is expected to take a month.

“To think that all of that work that we’re going to do in five months could be changed on July 1, it can’t happen,” he said. “If they then give me direction to somehow reverse all this thing – it can’t be done in two months. This vote should not be predicated on what might change – it should only be predicated upon whether or not you want the eighth grade in the high school or the fifth grade in the middle school – everything else clouds that issue.”

If the bond were to pass, it would essentially have no impact on the district budget. There is $600,000 worth of debt from 2006 bond currently built into the budget. “They just take each other’s place,” Nagler said, explaining that payments on the new bond if passed would be $550,000. “We pay off one bond, the next bond takes the debt place.”

If the bond fails, the money may go to pay for another program.

“We may need it we’re running out of money to pull from to balance these numbers,” Nagler said.