Levittown to boost academic programs

New high school courses and career programs are among the initiatives the Levittown School District plans to introduce next year, if its budget is approved by the public in May.

As discussions continued on the developing 2016-17 budget, Board of Education members and the public heard about new academic programs that are in the works at the Feb. 3 meeting. The draft budget would raise spending by 1.9 percent to $205.6 million in Nassau County’s third largest district.

At the Gerald R. Clapps Career and Technical Center, which serves 372 students from Levittown’s two high schools and neighboring districts, two new programs are planned, in addition to the eight that currently exist. GC Tech would offer construction management and landscape design and management, which Director Frank Creter said are both growing industries with numerous job opportunities.

Creter explained that GC Tech has a 100 percent graduation rate, with 81 percent going on to colleges or trade schools.

More than half of the students who attend GC Tech, which offers morning and afternoon sessions, are from MacArthur and Division Avenue high schools. In recent years, Levittown has seen a decline in the number of students attending from other districts. Creter said the hope is that the addition of the two programs will reverse that trend.

Tuition for GC Tech, for students from out of the district, will rise by $306 to $14,000 next year, to cover the start-up costs of the two programs and the addition of a guidance counselor. “We think that enhances the program enough to ask for a slight increase,” said Bill Pastore, the assistant superintendent for business. “It’s the first time we’ve increased tuition in a long time.”

Six new high school courses are also being planned. Two classes in social studies include New York City and ethics. American Sign Language would also be introduced and the Family and Consumer Sciences program would add life management and international cuisine classes.

The Advanced Placement program would also be expanded to include a two-part course called AP Capstone. The first part would be AP Seminar, a research class that would be offered for sophomores. In this class, students would pick a topic they want to research and would complete an individual essay, a team project and presentation, and an exam for their AP score.

AP Research would be open to juniors and seniors, and would include more in-depth research and the completion of a thesis paper. Debbie Rifkin, assistant superintendent for instruction, said the purpose of this program is to teach students to be independent thinkers while improving their research, communication, argumentative and writing skills.

The expectation is to run two classes of AP Seminar at each high school for the first year, with each co-taught by an English and social studies teacher. Class sizes would likely range from 20 to 25 students. Rifkin said there would be some initial costs to the district to have the teachers trained over the summer.

Rifkin said that the AP Capstone program is growing in popularity among high schools on Long Island and across the country, and Levittown students should be afforded the opportunity.

At other levels, an elementary keyboarding program would be introduced. “Many students are just using their iPads at home,” Rifkin said, “and they never get those keyboarding skills they need later on.”

The district would being back the computer literacy workshop for middle school students. It would be a 10-week program and would require the addition of one teacher, who would be shared between Jonas Salk and Wisdom Lane schools.

An extra classroom at Lee Road Elementary School would be converted to a STEAM lab, emphasizing science, technology, engineering, art and math. A new elementary school science program will be unveiled and weekend cultural excursions are in the works.

The next budget meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Levittown Memorial Education Center.