‘Princeton Plan’ doable for East Rockaway schools

Hundreds of parents and residents packed the East Rockaway High School auditorium on Jan. 19 to hear Dr. Michael J. Dutkowsky, a consultant for AdvisorySolutions, unveil the findings of a study he conducted on whether the district’s two elementary schools could be reorganized. The Elementary Reorganization Report would help administrators devise a redistricting plan that would group students at the Centre Avenue and Rhame Avenue schools by grade rather than by location.

“…We find ourselves duplicating services in similar populations of students on both sides of town,” Superintendent Roseanne Melucci said. “We need to make both of these scenarios better for the children that we serve.”
Dutkowsky is a retired administrator and a retired attorney who specializes in school law. He worked in eight school districts during his 37 year career. Since he retired in 2010, he has worked as a consultant for four school districts.

Other small districts in Nassau County, including Malverne, East Williston, Oyster Bay, Carle Place and Levittown, have implemented a grade-clustering method, which is known as the Princeton Plan. East Rockaway Board of Education trustees will decide in the next few months whether the district will be added to the list.
Dutkowsky interviewed 23 people for his study, including the district’s three principals — Timothy Silk of Centre Avenue, Laura Guggino of Rhame Avenue and William Fortgang of East Rockaway Junior/Senior High School — and studied the schools’ enrollment numbers since the 2002-03 academic year.

He concluded that redistricting would be feasible if one school was limited to kindergarten through second grade and the other enrolled students in third through sixth grades. The best option for the school board to consider, Dutkowsky said, would be to house the younger students at Centre Avenue and the older students at Rhame Avenue, though the enrollments could be reversed.

He added that there are currently 21 classrooms at Centre Avenue and 22 at Rhame Avenue. In his recommended model, Dutkowsky said, there would be five sections each for kindergarten through second grade, four sections each for grades four through six and three sections for special-education classes.

“Centre Avenue could definitely house the 15 sections of [kindergarten through second-grade] students … have room for art, music and computer, and still have an open, full-sized classroom to assign,” he said. “They would not use up all of the 21 regular, full-sized classrooms.”

According to Dutkowsky’s PowerPoint presentation, both schools could continue to use smaller rooms for other tasks, including special education resources, reading, ESL and speech.

East Rockaway is the smallest school district in Nassau County, with an enrollment of fewer than 2,000 students. At the start of the school year, there were 674 students in the elementary schools, both of which currently have kindergarten through sixth-grade classes.

The proposed plan, which would apply only to those two schools, would concentrate the district’s resources more efficiently and provide consistency in instruction and curriculum, Dutkowsky said.

Another benefit that he outlined would be in the music program. He said that students in the band, orchestra and chorus now practice at their respective schools during the year and are then brought together for a few rehearsals before their winter and spring concerts. “The music people talked very positively about the fact that they can meet all of the students’ needs at the same time and much more efficiently,” Dutkowsky said.

After considering a plan under which one school would house kindergarten through third grade and the other would enroll fourth- through sixth-graders, Dutkowsky explained, he concluded that such a division would not be feasible because of the number of classrooms in the two schools. In that model, there were 19 sections of kindergarten through third grade and 12 sections of fourth through sixth grade.
After Dutkowsky’s presentation, members of the school board and residents in the audience asked questions about his findings. The concerns they voiced ranged from the number of sections allotted for each grade to transportation costs to the possibility that a family could have multiple children in different schools in the district.

“Since we are experiencing the worst recession since the school district began and we know we need to solve these problems within the budget that we have,” Melucci said, “we are being asked to do more with the resources that are currently available to us.”

Residents were promisedmore opportunities to ask questions of Dutkowsky and school board members, but a few questions and comments were directed at Dutkowsky after the presentation. “I could say on my one street alone we have four new single-family homeowners that all had children in the last year or two,” a resident said. “This a concern — they could have three children at three different schools.”

Further questions can be asked at upcoming meetings starting on Jan. 31.“We’re very interested in hearing what you have to say,” said board President Neil Schloth. “We really want to make a decision based on all of the information provided to us, and we want you to know who we are and that we’re going to be there to hear what you have to say.”
Dutkowsky’s PowerPoint presentation is available on the district’s website, www.eastrockawayschools.org.