Residents: 'Our Concerns Fell on Deaf Ears'

Although the Glen Cove Board of Education lowered expenditures by $80,000 before adopting its $70.3 million 2010-11 budget, many residents still criticized the administration on Wednesday for approving staffing cuts for next year. 

The budget calls for the elimination of 11 teaching positions, one teaching assistant and three administrator/supervisors, among other cuts, as a way to save $2.7 million next year. 

Along with two guidance counselors, an English chairman, a secondary principal and fine arts coordinator are some of the positions included in the proposed layoffs. By law, administrators said, the district has to let go of staff based on seniority. 

Guidance Department Debates

Since February, the district's school board meetings have been packed with residents, with the majority speaking out against losing guidance counselors at Glen Cove High School. For many, the Guidance Department plays a crucial role in improving academic performance as well as helping students apply for colleges and scholarships. 

Administrators, said, however, that the district researched what the proposed guidance changes would mean for students before including them in the budget cuts, and they are confident that the department will be able to provide the same leadership next year. 

If the budget is approved by voters on May 18, the ratio of students to guidance counselors at the high school, school officials said, would increase from 150 to 180 students per counselor, because the school will have five instead of six counselors.  

"We will have a guidance counselor from the middle school come up to the high school. It just so happens that the last two counselors hired are both [working] at the high school," explained Ida McQuair, the board's president. "However, we're only eliminating one guidance counselor at the high school."

But the board's decision to approve the cuts still left many taxpayers contending that their "concerns fell on deaf ears" during Wednesday's school board meeting. 

Resident Liz Brasiello, who helped to get dozens of high school students to attend recent school board meetings in support of the guidance counselors, said the proposed changes at the guidance level "will ruin the district." 

"The Guidance Department is a very important part of our school and everything that we have done and everything that we have said on [its] behalf, went in one ear and out the other," Brasiello told the board, just before becoming visibly emotional. "It really didn't make a bit of a difference what we said, because you didn't listen to us and I'm so disgusted."

Resident Zefy Christopoulos also criticized the board for not exhausting all options, especially consolidating some services with the city government, before proposing the budget cuts. 

"I am really appalled by the lack of innovation on the part of our school board," Christopoulos said. "The 11th hour is not the time to look at ways to save money and to respond to the people, parents and students [after] they come and plead to save certain positions."

But administrators fired back, highlighting that they have worked on the budget for months and that the proposed spending plan places education and the taxpayer as priority.

"We find it hurtful that some of you think that we just kind of blew this off and did not look at everything a gazillion times, because we did," McQuair said to residents. "... And every single item that remains in the budget needs to be done ... and to imply that we haven't done our due diligence is quite upsetting."

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