Safety, space issues surface at SSHS

In its first official meeting of the new school year, members of the Board of Education were joined by district administrators, teachers, staff, parents and students for the annual inspection of the district's high school, middle school and its five elementary schools. A group of about 30 people met outside the administrative offices in South Side High School on Sept. 2, where the day-long tour started promptly at 8:30 a.m.

"The buildings are in the best shape we've seen for the start of school," said Board of Education President Mark Masin. "It 's a credit to our building staff that they've taken a great deal of pride in having our schools shine. We all appreciate their efforts.

"Having said that," Masin added, "the tour of South Side High School revealed that the report presented by the high school Compact for Learning team to the Board of Education last spring correctly identified some areas in the school that need improvement and modification. The Board of Education will be considering the different scenarios of how some of the recommendations [in that report] can be implemented."

Masin was referring to the Compact for Learning Committee, a team of students, parents, teachers and administrators who issued a report calling for sweeping upgrades at South Side High School to ready it for 21st-century learning.

The "most cogent need for renovation," are the science labs, according to the document that was issued before the summer break and covered in a story, "Tough love for SSHS" in the July 23-29 issue of the Herald. The report is posted in full on the Rockville Centre school district's Web site, www.rvcschools.org.

The Sept. 2 tour confirmed the report's conclusions that South Side's labs do not come close to meeting new technology and size requirements for high school science labs and in almost all cases, are either too small, have no or limited access to water, inadequate electric supplies and "uncoordinated" space for doing the advanced group hands-on lab work the International Baccalaureate and New York state Regents science curriculums require.