Parents angry over teachers' protest

As a sign of solidarity in their effort to settle a contract dispute after more than a year of negotiation, members of the North Merrick Faculty Association have attended Board of Education meetings clad in black from head to toe for months. But when teachers donned their dark garb on the first day of school Sept. 8, and left classrooms undecorated to make a point, some parents said they thought the educators went too far.

"The teachers have to understand, if they were making a statement, they were making it to the parents because the school board wasn't at the school," Lynda Bekore, a Camp Avenue parent, said at the Sept. 8 Board of Education meeting. "And for the many parents who supported them up until now, we just looked at each other and said, 'They just crossed a line,' and they crossed a line that's going be very, very difficult to erase in our memory."

North Merrick Faculty Association President Rosanne Petraglia, a third-grade teacher at Fayette School, did not address parents' concerns directly, but in a prepared statement to the board said, "As always, the teachers of the North Merrick Faculty Association continue to work diligently to provide each student of North Merrick with the care, the inspiration and the knowledge necessary to have a very fulfilling and successful school year."

Petraglia said that a mediator was introduced into the negotiation process at a Sept. 1 session, adding that faculty association members were "impressed and encouraged," and looking forward to the next scheduled mediation session on Sept. 16.

Community members living near Old Mill Road School also brought up concerns about crime and mischief caused by teenagers hanging out in the school yard and exiting through a back gate.

"It took us a very long time to get a new playground... It's been vandalized already," said Cindy Weinblatt, a parent who lives nearby. "There's broken beer bottles everywhere, the kids go out there to play. It's a hazard, it's a menace, it's terrible," she said.

Weinblatt said that teenagers use the back gate as "an escape route" from police, and leave debris such as beer bottles and cans around the neighborhood. Once, she said, she found a teenager passed out on her front lawn and had to call police.

Trustee Linda Fuller expressed uncertainty about community requests to lock the back gate at Old Mill Road School, noting that it might alienate students who use that as a point of entry and exit to the school. Years ago, she said, it was locked, and residents appealed to the board to have it left open permanently.

"The board will absolutely take this under consideration," board President John Rossi said.