View from 'across the Ocean': Malverne couple proposes charter school in Lakeview

Bureaucracy is destroying Malverne public schools. That is the sentiment that has driven a Malverne couple to propose opening a charter school in neighboring Lakeview, “across the Ocean,” in local parlance, divided as the two communities are by Ocean Avenue.

Matt and Jodi Morello are both teachers. They don’t have any children, and neither attended Malverne public schools. But they are passionate about education and the futures of their nieces and nephews, godchildren and the children of friends and neighbors. The Morellos are concerned about low state-exam scores, reduced art and music instruction, and students who they say are being pushed through the Malverne school system only to end up ill-prepared for college and the working world.

“Seventy-five percent of Malverne residents send their children to private schools,” Matt Morello, 44, told the Herald. “If that’s not an indictment of the [public] schools, I don’t know what is.”

Some Malvernites attribute the private-school trend to the district’s turbulent history. It was forcefully integrated in 1965, after two years of protests, demonstrations, boycotts and delays. Many outraged white parents refused to send their children to the Woodfield Road School, which had been the “colored” school. Angry black parents who lived in Lakeview boycotted the schools. Some parents opened secret schools in their homes, and others staged blockades. Eventually the district was fully integrated, but mostly white Malverne and mostly black Lakeview were never unified.

“You have one school serving two communities, and neither community is happy,” Morello said. “This calls for an alternative.”