Future of Doshi STEM program threatened

Posted

When Nassau BOCES came up with the idea to create the Doshi STEM Institute, a half-day, five-days-a-week learning experience for high school students focusing on science, technology, engineering and math, the Malverne school district immediately saw its value.

“We’re one of the charter members of this enterprise,” said Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund. “It’s a breakthrough concept for kids who have the ability and talent that could not be afforded in the smaller districts.” The institute, located in Syosset, is named for financial backer Dr. Leena Doshi, co-founder of Doshi Diagnostic Imaging Serivces, and is attended by students from nine school districts who are bused in to take advantage of its programs.

After only 18 months of operation, however, the institute is suffering financially — so much so that county BOCES board trustees may decide as early as this week to close its doors as well as the Long Island High School of the Arts, which houses the institute and its own arts program.

The Doshi STEM Institute aimed to balance its budget by admitting 50 students at each of four grade levels — a total of 200 students — for a little over $14,000 in tuition per student, $7,500 funded by school budgets and the remainder by the Doshi family.

But the facility has a current enrollment of just 48 students: 30 freshmen and 18 sophomores. (Junior and senior classes have not yet been established.) As a result, the school is seeing less than half of its expected revenue.

The Long Island High School for the Arts charges a little over $12,000 per student, has seen enrollment drop from 197, in the 2008-09 school year, to 100 this year.

Next year, if the High School for the Arts and the Doshi Institute are still operational, school districts’ per-student contribution per student would have to increase, according to the high school’s principal, A.J. Hepworth.

“Any startup business takes three to five years to get in the black,” Hunderfund said of the Doshi Institute. “My feeling is that they should build that in, and shift some priorities.”

Page 1 / 2