Doshi, LIHSA parents must ‘find the funds’

BOCES pledges to keep programs alive for one more year

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If there was ever a way to get a passionate group motivated to raise money, Nassau BOCES accomplished it last week.

On the brink of losing the Doshi STEM program and the Long Island High School for the Arts, hundreds of parents, students, school administrators and teachers gathered at a BOCES board meeting on March 26 to plead to the board to keep the program alive.

And the board gave them what they wanted — but only for a year, with no guarantee that the programs would continuing unless the attendees themselves found the funds to keep them going.

“The BOCES budget is different than a normal school district,” Eric Shultz, the board’s president, explained. “A normal school district establishes a budget with X amount of money during the year and can shuffle it around however they want. At BOCES, all the programs have to run on their own. If any program doesn’t sustain itself on its own, then you have to raise the tuition to some exorbitant amount, or close up the program.”

Because BOCES cannot raise funds for its programs on its own, it appealed to the audience to do so. “At the risk of sounding brash,” Shultz said, “find the funds.”

BOCES oversees the Long Island High School for the Arts, in Syosset, which houses the Doshi STEM Institute as well as its own arts program. The institute is named for financial backer Dr. Leena Doshi, co-founder of Doshi Diagnostic Imaging Services, and is attended by students from nine school districts who are bused in to take advantage of its programs. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

One by one, board members appealed to the crowd at last week’s meeting to reach out to public officials, philanthropists and their schools’ administrations to find the money to keep sending students to the programs. “This board and our administrators have been working tirelessly for both LIHSA and Doshi STEM,” said board Vice President Susan Bergtraum. “I hope that your next step is to your local districts, to the benefactors that you say are out there, to legislators — including the governor — and tell them if they don’t send the students or find creative funding, we may not have a choice in the future.”

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