Mineola School Board President Addresses Trustee’s Comments

After having received her reelection to the , made the requisite thank you’s to residents of the district for the as well as for another term on the board.

“I’m extremely gratified,” the current board president said at the May 24 meeting at the . “Not only did it pass but it passed... almost two-to-one because I feel that’s really a validation of what we’re trying to do here to stay on track and be patient fiscally. I feel very privileged and honored to be working for the children of our community; there’s no place I would rather be.”

She did however, wish to address comments made by trustee – who was outed in the 2012 election by – in a shortly before the election, which she said were not correct.

“I understand campaign rhetoric but there were certain things that were said that I felt for clarification to the public because sometimes misinformation gets out in the public and then we find out years later that we’re dealing with that misinformation,” Napolitano said, asking Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler to weigh in on the comments to ensure accuracy.

When asked by Napolitano whether McGrath’s charge that the district conducted “an employer survey,” the superintendent stated that he was “not aware of any survey” given to employees at any time during his tenure in the district either before his appointment as superintendent or after.

“If we did do a survey I would certainly like to see it,” Napolitano said, “and I’d like to know who we actually surveyed... and we didn’t pay for one.”

Another topic Napolitano questioned the superintendent about was McGrath’s comment that the average class size had increased to 27 and because of this the district’s test scores suffered.

“I already know one of those statement’s is incorrect because it was based on a 2011 scores which was prior to when we reconfigured,” Napolitano said.

Dr. Nagler said that it was his belief that the report McGrath was referencing in his letter was in Newsday and “the year in which the information came, we did have an eighth grade that was about 220 kids which would average 27 (students) per class. In our eighth grade there’s always been eight sections. We have in the past opened a ninth section – when the IL’s were all there and we had four IL’s and we had teaching periods with them, we did that but that 27 was not a result of reconfiguration it just was an anomaly that year that we had more kids in the grade.”

Typically the school district has an average of 200 students per grade level. The class sizes are 22 for kindergarten through second grade, 24 for grades three and four, 26 for grades five and six and 28 for grades seven and above.

“Did reconfiguration change class size? Yes,” Dr. Nagler said. “We don’t have classes of 13 to 22; by consolidating we kind of leveled the numbers across the board. But this is something we’re always going to deal with. In terms of where we are compared with the rest of the county, our class size are among the lowest.”

McGrath was not present at the May 24 meeting.