School Board Considers Bringing Back Alternative Schooling

When Glen Cove High School’s alternative curriculum program for at-risk students was cut in 2009, the school board talked of replacing it with a similar program at Robert M. Finley Middle School, but nothing ever came of it.

“Some students don’t learn the same way as others, so this was providing a more nurturing, smaller-group environment where they could learn within their own confines,” said trustee Gail Nedbor-Gross at the board’s Feb. 13 meeting.

She said that program was originally presented as not requiring any additional cost to the district. Once it was up and running, however, expenses did begin to accrue, including the money it cost to rent the Boys and Girls Club as a classroom space. By the time it was eliminated, the program was costing the district upwards of $200,000 annually.

Another issue with that program, Nedbor-Gross said, was its design. Students who were experiencing difficulty learning in the mainstream class environment or who were acting out behaviorally were sent to the program for one year before being sent back to the traditional classrooms where their problems had manifested.

Several board members at Monday’s meeting expressed skepticism over the program’s effectiveness, and whether such intervention at the high school level is too late for those students who need it.

Nedbor-Gross requested the matter be put on the agenda for discussion at the board’s next meeting, citing a need for such help for students who have trouble in the mainstream school environment.

“It’s more hands-on, more personal attention,” she said of this type of teaching. She also noted the disruption that can occur for an entire classroom when some students act out due to their frustration.

She said the drop-out rate is high among this population, a fact that didn’t change significantly with the single-year plan enacted under the district’s former supervisor.

“Other districts have four-year similar programs,” Nedbor-Gross said. If such a program were brought to the middle school, she said, the district might be able to “get them at a younger age when we can have more of an impact.”

Robert M. Finley Middle School is “very large and under-utilized,” she said, which could provide a rent-free space to conduct an alternative program. She noted the option of using current faculty rather than new hires to keep from incurring added costs.

“We start there, and then maybe someday when we have more money we can add to it,” she said. “But for now, you work with what you have.”

Dan Cox, a former teacher in the district, addressed the board at Monday’s meeting concerning the issue.

“Go to the people who are getting their hands dirty in the field and ask them what you should do,” he said.

He noted the experience of his friend, former Glen Cove High School English teacher Tom Ruckert, who he said spearheaded an alternative learning program at the school roughly 15 years ago along with a few other dedicated faculty. That program, Cox said, resulted in the graduations of students who might have never made it otherwise.

Reached at his home on Tuesday, Ruckert recalled the experience.

“I think we created an environment that was different; an environment that was not school-like. But the work was,” he said. He described a science project where students tracked the path of a hamburger through the human body’s digestive system, from the first bite to its exit.

“Not everyone fits in that high school model where they sit there in rows and the teachers talk at them, so it results in acting out,” said Ruckert.