The Piano Man comes to the rescue

Nassau BOCES says rock icon Billy Joel wants to help High School for the Arts, Doshi STEM avoid closure

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Last week, the Nassau BOCES board of directors told a room packed with several hundred concerned parents and students that it would delay a decision to close the Long Island High School for the Arts and the Doshi Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Institute, two specialty schools attended by both Nassau and Suffolk county students.

The decision was influenced in part by a letter from Long Island pop superstar Billy Joel, in which he asked the board to reconsider. “I am asking as a concerned Long Islander that before agreeing to close the school, that you consider all other alternatives before allowing LIHSA to close,” Joel wrote.

The rock icon also said, through his business manager, that he would be interested in helping out. “My conversation with him indicated that Billy would be willing to personally and professionally donate to the cause,” Nassau BOCES Board President Eric Schultz said at the Nov. 19 meeting. But Schultz added, “[Joel’s] participation alone, however, would not be enough, although significant.” The details of Joel’s offer were not announced.

The board said that it already had a $1.7 million deficit in its budget for the specialty schools, because BOCES provided the financing when more tuition should have been coming in from Nassau and Suffolk school districts. Due to low student enrollment in the schools, however, adequate funding wasn’t being generated. Additionally, Dr. Leena Doshi, of Doshi Diagnostics, stopped payments into the $1 million grant promised to the institute that bears her name. Calls made in the past to Doshi went unanswered.

The Malverne school district currently pays $9,000 to send each of 14 students to the Doshi STEM program, 71.7 percent of which is reimbursed by Nassau BOCES a year later, said Christopher Caputo, a business administrator for the Malverne school district. No Malverne students attend the LIHSA program.

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