As the Mineola School Board is poised to put an alternate $6.1 million bond proposal for elementary school consolidation on a February ballot, one board member is set to propose a more radical consolidation: a merger with the Herricks School District.

The thrashing district voters gave the $6.7 million “cluster” proposal that would have closed Meadow Drive in Albertson, Cross Street in Williston Park and Hampton Street in Mineola has raised doubts about whether the other bond proposition or the so-called default option will ultimately be acceptable to a majority of residents.

And at this week’s board meeting, board member John McGrath, who professes opposition to all defined consolidation options, said he will propose that the Mineola School District to explore a merger with the Herricks School District. The idea would both reduce costs and maintain the neighborhood elementary schools that so many district residents oppose closing, according to McGrath.

“By merging with Herricks and closing our middle school and high school, you could preserve our neighborhood schools as well,” McGrath said, enumerating an idea he speculated about on the school district’s website earlier this month. “The state will give you tons of money at extremely favorable interest rates to do this.”

McGrath estimates that shutting the middle school and high school would save $50 million – more than any of the school consolidation options offer – and would leave the same configuration of neighborhood schools. Mineola students would attend Herricks Middle School and Herricks High School, while some Herricks students could attend Mineola’s elementary schools.

McGrath and Irene Parrino voted against the putting up the bond proposal that failed and could be poised to vote against a February referendum on the alternate bond. They both joined in a chorus exhorting that the board slow the process down in the wake of last week’s decisive vote against the bond proposal.

“The voters just turned down a $6.7 million bond. I think it’s highly unlikely that they’ll approve a $6.1 million bond,” McGrath said.

He called the alternate bond vote “confusing” because it’s a two-part proposition involving approval of a $4.4 million bond to add eight classrooms, a common room and a bus loop to Jackson Avenue to situate grades 3 through 5 there, and a second proposition for a $1.7 million bond to add four classrooms for grades pre-K through 2 at Hampton Street. If both propositions were to pass, then Cross Street and Willis Avenue would be the schools to be shuttered.

The only reason some residents might vote for the bond proposition is to avoid the default option, according to McGrath, which would put fifth graders in the middle school and eighth graders in the high school, prospective changes that prompted some residents to oppose the initial bond option.

“Over time, some of the issues have become so exaggerated. The reasons for the consolidation are completely being ignored,” said Kathy Darmstadt, a member of the volunteer finance committee that analyzed the current options last summer. “I don’t see anybody offering an option that’s an alternative.”

The board took a decision to close two schools earlier this year as a savings strategy in the face of stagnant student enrollment. Under the remaining two options, Meadow Drive remains in the mix, satisfying residents who objected to Cross and Meadow – the district’s north side schools – both closing.

“There were people who felt [the $6.7 million bond] was too radical in terms of the number of buildings that were being closed. And there were people who were territorial about their buildings being closed,” said board vice president Christine Napolitano, who favors putting the alternate bond up for a vote.

Napolitano, Willilam Hornberger and board president Terence Hale are likely to remain united in favor of the $6.1 million bond option – the option favored by the Community Committee on Consolidation – which would save the district a projected $25 million over the next decade.

“At this point, the dialogue has to come to an end and we have to go forward,” Napolitano said. “You can go on with this conversation forever. We have to act.”

Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler is concerned that district voters think that voting against the bonds will halt the process.

“If they don’t like any of the choices, it’s still happening,” he said. “I don’t know how many people understand that we’re closing a building in 2011.”

But speaking to the Jackson Avenue PTA earlier this week, Nagler projected a scenario that could change everything.

“All you need is the board to change and somebody to say, ‘I don’t want to close a building’. That could happen,” Nagler said.

In May, Hornberger and Hale are up for re-election, and if they are unseated or choose not to run, a reconstituted school board could decide to reverse course, and abandon the seemingly irresistible logic that consolidation previously represented.

Nassau County Republicans were declaring Mineola Mayor Jack Martins the victor in the tight 7th state Senate District race against incumbent Democrat Craig Johnson early Wednesday morning in a race that could help determine which party hold the majority in the state Senate.

“The communities have spoken. It’s time to take common sense back to Albany,” Martins told a euphoric gathering of party leaders and supporters at Mirelle’s in Westbury on Tuesday night.

But the elation over the apparent victory of Martins and other Republican candidates was tempered later in the morning as complete results from Tuesday’s balloting revealed a razor-thin margin of 415 votes for Martins over Johnson, with 81,677 votes cast.

The Nassau County Board of Elections was anticipating a demand for a full recount in the race from the Democrats. Five additional days will be required for tabulating results from absentee ballots cast in the race, and the timetable for reporting final results after the recount remains uncertain.

The Martins-Johnson contest had been a bitter personal fight filled with charges and counter-charges from each candidate’s campaign questioning the character of the other man. Martins has served as mayor of Mineola since 2003, and credited himself with reviving the financial fortunes of the village. Johnson slammed Martins for raising taxes in Mineola, trying to position himself as a fiscal conservative.

Johnson was the first Democrat elected to the seat in recent memory, winning a special election in 2007 and reelection two years ago.

When asked what he considered the difference in the race, Martins said, “The truth. People realized that things in Albany needed to be changed.”

A Martins victory would enable the Republicans to recapture all nine Long Island senate seats and could give them a slim majority in the state Senate.

The 7th Senate District includes New Hyde Park, the Willistons, Roslyn, Great Neck, Port Washington, Mineola, Westbury, New Cassel and parts of Franklin Square and Elmont.

One of the local Congressional races provoked anxiety for both camps, as Republican challenger Francis X. Becker led incumbent Carolyn McCarthy in the 4th Congressional district race by a margin of 6,000 votes late in the evening. But McCarthy ultimately prevailed 89,828 votes to 77,483 votes with 99 percent of the precincts reporting. McCarthy stuck by her support of the federal health care legislation in her campaign, while Becker sought to cast her as a representative who was out of touch with her constituents.

“Yesterday, the voters of the 4th Congressional District sent a clear message,” McCarthy said in a statement. “They said ‘no’ to the Party of No, to the distortion of facts and to the politics of division. They said ‘yes’ to reason and to government taking aggressive measures to protect consumers, small businesses, taxpayers, and the working class.”

McCarthy, 66, serves on the House of Representatives Committee for Education and Labor and also is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities.

A visibly dejected Becker had positive words for the process as he faced almost certain defeat at the Republican celebration.

“The Democratic process is always amazing to me, that we have disagreements over issues and it’s always done in a peaceful way,” Becker said.

The 4th Congressional District comprises New Hyde Park, Floral Park, Garden City, the Willistons, Mineola, Westbury, Hampstyead, Malverne, Valley Stream, Lynbrook, Rockville Centre and the Five Towns.

In the 5th Congressional district race, incumbent Gary Ackerman handily defeated Dr. James Milano and Elizabeth Berney, garnering 62 percent of the votes cast to win his 15th term in the seat. Milano recorded 37 percent of the votes and Berney got 1 percent of the total votes.

The 5th Congressional District consists of portions of northeastern Queens County and northwestern Nassau County with over 650,000 people from many backgrounds. The Queens portion of the district, which represents 70 percent of the voters, includes the neighborhoods of Bayside, Corona, Douglaston, Flushing, Jamaica Estates, Little Neck, and Whitestone. The Nassau portion of the district includes Albertson, Great Neck, Manhasset, Port Washington, Roslyn, Sands Point, Williston Park and New Hyde Park.

Ackerman also won the majority of the votes in Nassau County by getting 21,858 while Milano earned 18,065 votes and Berney received 112 votes.

Ackerman, 67 from Roslyn Heights, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and vice chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Incumbent Democrat Michelle Schimel in the 16h Assembly District defeated Scott Diamond by 6,000 votes receiving 58 percent of the district’s votes.

“I am grateful for all the supporters who came out to vote in this election,” Schimel said. “I am delighted to be back serving this district under a new administration in state government. I have my work cut out for me, but I have an agenda and plan to go forward with it despite so many new players on the scene after this year’s elections.”

The 16th Assembly District includes Great Neck, Manhasset, Port Washington, Herricks, Mineola and East Williston. Schimel has represented the 16th Assembly District since March 2007.

Schimel serves on the board of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and is a member of the energy, environmental conservation, local governments, transportation, veterans and majority steering committees in the state Assembly.

Republican incumbent Thomas McKevitt easily overcame Democratic challenger Thomas Devaney to retain his 17th Assembly District seat, garnering 23,513 votes to 14,313 votes with 99 percent of the precincts reporting. That enabled McKevitt to achieve his goal in the campaign.

“It was my goal to break 60 percent,” he said. “The huge Republican turnout neutralized whatever anti-incumbent sentiment that was out there.”

McKevitt is the ranking minority member on the committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Mental Health, and also serves on the Insurance, Small Business, and Aging committee

The 17th Assembly District comprises the Willistons, Mineola, New Hyde Park, Garden City Park, Garden City, Uniondale, North Merrick and North Bellmore.

Republican Ed Ra, a political novice, prevailed in the three-way race for an open seat in the 21st Assembly District. Ra drew 17,899 voters to Democrat Patrick Nicolosi’s 14,625 votes. Working Families candidate Mimi Pierre Johnson drew 1,519 votes.

Ra, deputy attorney for the Town of Hempstead, said he was “elated” and “humbled” to receive the support to win the seat.

“I’m eager to get to work. There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said.

The 21st Assembly District comprises Elmont, Franklin Square, Malverne, West Hempstead, North Valley Stream, Floral Park and part of New Hyde Park.

In a special election to fill a one-year term to become the Town of North Hempstead’s Receiver of Taxes, Democrat Charles Berman beat Republican Jeff Bass by more than 5,000 votes.

Berman, 55 from North Hills, won his first ever Election Day race. Berman has been named interim receiver of taxes by the Town of North Hempstead town board in 2003 replacing Ann Galante and also last January taking over for Rocco Iannarelli.

“I want to thank the residents of North Hempstead for giving me an opportunity to continue serving them,” Berman said. “I look forward to continuing to work hard to make the tax paying process as convenient as possible for our residents.”

In statewide results, Democrat Andrew Cuomo trounced Conservative Carl Paladino to win the governor’s office, nearly doubling Paladino’s numbers as he garnered more than 2.5 million votes, 62 percent, to 1.4 million votes, 34 percent for Paladino.

Democrat Thomas DiNapoli, a Great Neck native, narrowly defeated Republican Harry Wilson in the race for comptroller, drawing more than 1.9 million votes to more than 1.8 million votes.

The race for state attorney general was not as closely contested as anticipated, with Democrat Eric Schneiderman beating Dan Donovan with more than 2.1 million votes to 1.7 million votes.

Results for those statewide races are based on results with 97 percent of the precincts counted.

Both New York Democrats prevailed in their respective races to retain their U.S. Senate seats. Charles Schumer doubled the vote count of Republican challenger Jay Townsend, 2.6 million votes to 1.3 million votes to win his third Senate term. Kirsten Gillibrand won by a similar margin over Republican challenger Joseph Dio Guardi, drawing more than 2.4 million votes to 1.4 million votes.

Herricks elementary students’ writing will never be quite so elementary again with the introduction of a new system of learning the craft from a Columbia University’s Teachers College curriculum

The district’s elementary schools are in the second year of implementing the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project system in grades K through 5 with the support of a grant from the federal stimulus fund.

The system is based on the idea that writing is a life-long process in which the level of one’s skills continues to progress. Under the program, students in Herricks learn how to make choices about the structure of something they’re trying to put into words along with organizing ideas. They move through various stages of narrative and expository writing as they move through their lessons.

“The children write because they’re motivated to write,” Mary Louise Haley, principal of the Denton School, said during a presentation at last week’s Herricks school board meeting. And Haley said that motivation feeds vital aspects of their educational development.

“You can see the connection this makes to reading comprehension, to imagery and reading and even symbolism,” she said.

Sia Phillipou, a third grade teacher at Center Street, said the basis of the program is inspiring motivation that translates into words on the page.

“It’s about the love of writing. It’s about the passion for what they’re doing,” she said, recounting what she witnessed as a third grader in her class expressed his feelings about war. “His creativity shines. His voice is being heard.”

The process starts in kindergarten classes where students learn to associate pictures and sonic skills, learning words that they eventually translate into written words.

In first grade, they sketch out stories in picture form and have one-on-one peer sessions to discuss story structure with one another.

“They think, touch and tell their peers what they write about,” said Lindsay Cohart, first grade teacher at the Searingtown School. “It’s a job. Their partners feed back on their job and help them to write better.”

All three Herricks elementary schools are “project schools” in association with the Teachers College, which sends members of its staff to the schools to keep the curriculum updated.

“The staff developers come here and they give us curriculum for grades K through five,” said Debbie Linscott, reading teacher at Denton Avenue. She said the effect teachers perceive in the students’ progress is “cumulative. So as we grow with it, we see more and more results.”

Without the stimulus funds, the program wouldn’t have been initiated, according to Herricks officials.

The district received $427,000 in stimulus funding for the program, according to Herricks Superintendent of Schools John Bierwirth. The district, he said, is receiving that allocation in increments of $76,000 each year.

“It’s an expensive program and we didn’t have money to fund it,” Bierwirth told the school board members last week.

He spoke in glowing terms of the program designed to teach the grade schoolers every form of writing, including poetry.

“There is a curriculum here and it’s very child-friendly,” Bierwirth said.

A few years ago at the request of a couple of local papers I began writing a weekly column. The experience gave me an even deeper appreciation for professional news people who write columns for a living. I had always known that it was a tough job, particularly if one was committed to producing columns of a consistently high caliber, but I found that it was even tougher than I had realized. After taking a break for over a year I am going to give it another try. If you have any questions or concerns about any column, please feel free to contact me by email at jbierwirth@herricks.org.

By the time this article runs, state and national elections will be over and whoever is in power will be waking up to the challenges they will have to deal with. Clearly there are some very significant ones. New York State’s finances are very shaky. Implementing simple, quick fixes with the hope that a rising economy would come to the rescue is questionable at any time. Given the current circumstances they probably would not work anyway. New York needs to make significant long-term structural changes. If they are thoughtfully and fairly crafted, everyone will benefit in the long run. As proposals are rolled out I will try to write columns on them to bring them to your attention.

In the meantime and throughout the process we will try to keep our focus on improving the quality of education in Herricks for the benefit of all students. Their education goes on and we owe them our full attention. As a parent I was frequently reminded of the fact that a year may not seem that long to us, but it is to a student and if they miss any opportunities they cannot go back and make them up. A lost athletic season, a lost field trip, a lost opportunity to take a valuable class is probably lost forever.

Over the next several weeks I would like to talk about a number of initiatives to improve the quality of education in Herricks. There have been some fascinating presentations at recent Herricks Board meetings on some of these and more will be presented at upcoming Board meetings. I know, however, that many people are unable to make meetings.

One initiative which I have found particularly interesting has been the piloting of a new assessment, one which a number of us have been urging the New York State Education Department to allow districts to use in lieu of the cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming current State ELA and Math Grades 3-8 assessments which yield relatively little useful information for parents, students or teachers. The new assessment was developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association . It has a number of significant advantages:

It is computer based.

It is fully adaptive. The computer starts providing students with questions at an expected grade level. As students get questions right or wrong, the program provides easier or more difficult questions until it determines a student’s functional level. The ultimate score is not the number right or wrong, but what level of achievement a student is capable of. In fact, most students end up leaving a session having answered about the same percentage of questions correctly.

Each time a student takes the Northwest Evaluation Assocation test (3, 6, 12 months later), the computer system starts the student at their prior level of achievement.

There is no top or bottom as there is for most standardized assessments. Students across a full rang of achievement levels are accurately assessed.

Results are back in 24 hours or less.

Each assessment takes roughly an hour compared with several hours for administration and scoring. (Due to the cumbersome nature of the current New York assessments much of the month of May is lost to testing.)

Cheating is virtually impossible. (New York State officials acknowledge that this is a serious problem.)

The cost to school districts is half of the New York assessments. The cost to the state is virtually nothing.

Most importantly, the results can be a valuable part of the instructional process. Teachers can use the information to better organize and differentiate instruction and parents and students can receive the same information.

The key part is that data from the NWEA provides information on what a student can and cannot do. This allows everyone – teachers, parent, students – to focus their time and energy more efficiently and effectively.

Results in Herricks will be shared with Herricks parents and students shortly.

John E. Bierwirth

When Edward Kotarski started working in the Village of New Hyde Park Department of Public Works in the summer of 1973, he didn’t think of it as a career move.

But 37 years later, Kowarski will be taking early retirement next month after serving as DPW administrative assistant for the past 15 years.

“I never dreamed the job would turn out the way it did,” he said.

Kotarski recalled how he started in the department as a sanitation man making $3 an hour through his six-day weeks. He eventually got a commercial driver’s license and became a part-time truck driver.

But nothing much changed in his routine until a fellow named James McCloat – also soon to retire – took charge of things.

“He was like a breath of fresh air,” Kotarski recalls. “He said ‘Show me what you can do’.”

And Kotarski did, moving into the village Highway Department after recovering from a back problem and doing assorted jobs, including road repairs, tree trimming, snow removal and street sweeping. He remembers driving “archaic” snow removal trucks in years past, trucks equipped with plow blades that required the operator to get out of the cab to manipulate a mechanical lever that raised and lowered the blade.

He recalls a Labor Day weekend in 1985 when a freak storm struck the area, forcing him and his colleague to work from morning until dark, removing large trees that had been uprooted all over the village.

“It was a disaster. When I saw the street I said, ‘Call the National Guard’,” he said.

But it was Kotarski and his mates who did all the heavy lifting. It was also Kotarski who conducted one of the first comprehensive surveys of all the roads in the village, measuring cracks in the roads, and reporting where repairs were most urgently needed, examining the thoroughfares “street by street, inch by inch,” as he puts it.

He became an automotive service assistant in the late 1980s and then became the department’s auto service and learned to overhaul the street sweeper.

Back problems he suffered as a mechanic prompted him to ask McCloat for an inside job when one opened up, and he took on the job he’ll shortly be leaving. As DPW administrative assistant, he conducts inspections, responding to residents’ requests for street repairs or trees to be trimmed. He’s weekly filed a survey of those complaints over the past 15 years, scheduling the work to be done and notifying residents as to when it will be done.

“Basically I’m talking to people all the time,” he said, estimating that he’s personally interacted with one-quarter of the 10,000 people who inhabit the village. “In a small village, we deal with people more personally than you could in a larger municipality.

Since the late 1980s, Kotarski’s been an officer in the Civil Service Employees Association, serving as president of that union local for the past 10 years, negotiating two full contracts and two six-year contracts for the workers in his department in the process.

He’s also in charge of code enforcement, a job where he also fields plenty of complaints about summonses residents are issued.

But he’s enjoyed his work, particularly the unpredictable nature of it, and the opportunity to help people out.

“Every day is something different. You never know what to expect. When you know you’ve been able to do something for somebody, you feel good about that day,” Kotarski said.

He recalls advice his father gave him years ago: “Never do a job just good enough. Do it the best you can do.”

Kotarski said it’s troubled him that he’s had to tell residents lately that certain work can’t be done because of budget limitations in the current economic climate.

“It hurts when have to tell people you can’t do something,” he said. “Right now there are budgetary constraints and we can’t do everything we want to do.”

He’s taking early retirement with mixed feelings, but Kotarski said he’s looking forward to having more time to play golf and attend his nephew’s high school basketball games.

“I’m his biggest fan,” he confides.

When Kotarski departs soon, taking a little vacation time he’s stored up, he’ll be leaving more than a few local fans of his efforts behind.

On the second floor of the Garden City Park School, young fifth and sixth graders are taking turns at computer terminals in a program to improve their reading skills.

The new computer programs, a phonics regimen called Systems 44, and Read 180, a reading comprehension program that prompts students to answer questions about stories they read, are part of an initiative to help students bring their skills up to those of their grade peer groups.

“I like that it’s helping me read better,” Nicolas Van Velsor said. “Sometimes when I read what a word means, this helps me break a word down.”

This week, he said he’s reading a biography about President Barack Obama and writing a report about it.

“I like the computer because it’s fun,” said Stephanie Valencia, who speaks English and Spanish. “I mostly like to read fantasy books and scary books.”

The side effects of enjoying themselves during their individual time and increasing the pleasure they derive from reading are bonuses of the program the Garden City Park School introduced this semester.

The 90 minutes the 60 third-through-sixth graders spend in the reading program five days each week is divided into equal segments of one-on-one instruction with reading teacher Lauren Mykoliw, computer lessons that reinforce that instruction and time spent reading books they can choose from the reading lab room.

“Whatever we do in the instruction, they do on the computer,” Mykoliw said.

They progress through the lessons at their own speed and record themselves enunciating words to develop better English fluency. The computers keep a record of their progress so their teacher can gauge their individual needs.

A second tier program designed to improve reading skills in small group lessons with an instructor for one hour daily just wasn’t having the desired effect with some students, according to James Svendsen, principal of the Garden City Park School. So Svendsen said the school district looked for an additional level of intervention instruction to enable the students to improve.

That was Systems 44 and Read 180, designed by Scholastic, which also produced a Fast Math program the school will soon introduce as a 10-minute daily supplement to math classes.

The funding for both is approximately $62,000 of a $247,000 one-time federal grant from the American Recovery Relief Act, according to New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Superintendent of Schools Robert Katulak, who said the program is part of the district’s five-year development plan.

The school already had reading instructors and simply shifted teacher aide schedules to enable the daily reading periods.

It’s difficult to gauge how much of a boost the reading instruction is providing, Svendsen said, but he added that it is a proven program that was already being used by the Sewanhaka School District at the high school level.

“It’s early to tell. But we’re better able to see specifically what they need,” he said. “It’s about the monitoring. It’s more immediate and more specific to the children’s needs.”

When Kerry Chu first set herself a goal of running a marathon, she wasn’t sure she could physically do it.

That’s because the 28-year-old New Hyde Park resident had undergone brain surgery at North Shore LIJ in November 2004 to treat a chiari malformation, a rare brain abnormality in the cerebellum that causes severe headaches, muscle weakness, impaired motor skills and neck pain.

Chu recalled how the condition made it difficult for her to stand during her graduation ceremony at Providence College earlier that year.

Some months after the surgery, she gradually resumed the running regimen she had formerly maintained, and used the surgery as a motivation for a new goal.

And this Sunday, she’ll be running in the New York City Marathon to raise money for the American Syringomyelia & Chiari Alliance Project, a Long Island support group she currently leads as its chapter head.

“If I can survive brain surgery, I can run a marathon,” she told her then fiance – now husband – Bernard.

That moment came, along with the doubt that accompanied it, a few years after her surgery. In the interim, she hadn’t come close to running a distance that would lead to running 26 miles.

“As I was feeling better, I started a running a little more, but I never ran more than five miles,” Chu said

Two years ago, she received a flyer through the mail about running a half-marathon with a team in the Hamptons to raise money for the Leukemia Society and she thought it was a sign. She succeeded in running that race, and friends started teasing her about when she would attempt a full marathon. And she decided to set the bar higher for herself and take on that challenge

Her first race, the County Music Marathon in Nashville last year had a special meaning. It was a fundraising effort to combat a genetic disorder that afflicts her mother, Maureen, called Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT), which causes abnormalities in blood vessels.

“Raising money for me is a motivation to help other people,” Chu said.

She raised $4,000 from sponsors for that effort. And Chu has already raised $4,400 for the American Syringomyelia & Chiari Alliance Project before she even steps off on Sunday by word-of-mouth and the ASAP contact list. So she seems poised to exceed her goal of raising $5,000 for the cause.

Meanwhile, since running in the Nashville, she’s warmed up for the Big Apple race with three other marathons, in Philadelphia last November, the national marathon in Washington, D.C. in March and the Hartford Marathon last month. So while running was a stress reliever for Chu in college, it is now a source of purposeful achievement.

“It’s definitely a great feeling. For me having the goals of helping others, it’s mentally uplifting,” she said.

In the context of helping others, her father, Dennis, who serves on the board of the HHT Foundation, is a power of example to her.

But she herself provides a powerful example to others. With a titanium plate and scar tissue in her head from the surgery, she feels pain with changes in weather.

“I have bad pain in my neck,” she said. “But it’s so much better than it was.”

On Sunday, Chu will be running for the support group that tries to make life better for people afflicted with the same debilitating disease she continues to overcome.

If Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano’s move to cut off the county guarantee in 2013 stands up against the wave of criticism it is confronting, it will possibly also have to stand up in court to assert its viability.

School board superintendents universally expressed disdain and apprehension at the prospect of an end to the county guarantee to refund overpaid property taxes because of inaccurate assessments and said they anticipated the Republican initiative will almost certainly be met with a legal challenge.

“If it stays in place, we’ll have to build up a reserve in the budget. We’ll have to deal with it,” said John Bierwirth, superintendent of the Herricks Union Free School District.

But Bierwirth said he anticipated that the attempt to end the guarantee as of 2013 would be challenged in the courts.

“My understanding is that it will be contested in court, so we’ll see what happens,” he said.

Several other superintendents echoed Bierwirth’s expectation that a legal challenge would ensue. An initiative to eliminate the guarantee during the administration of former County Executive Thomas Suozzi was stopped by a state Supreme Court ruling last year.

Lorraine Deller, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Board Association, said that her organization is in communication with attorneys for the 55 respective school board’s it represents. But she said it is too early to say whether collective or individual legal action would ensue to battle the latest attempt to end the guarantee.

“All avenues are being looked at this point,” Deller said. “Now that the next step is being contemplated, it takes time for the school boards to talk to their attorneys to decide how to deal with this.”

Meanwhile, all school district superintendents are anxious about the potential financial fallout if the guarantee is terminated – particularly in light of a statewide property tax cap proposed by the governor-elect Andrew Cuomo, shrinking state education aid and a county sewer tax.

“We have the perfect storm in place,” said Robert Katulak, superintendent for the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District. “You have diminishing revenue and increasing expenditures. What they should have done was fix the assessment program first, and then address the school budgets.”

Along with the uncertainty of the ultimate impact the end of the tax guarantee will have on individual districts, there is uncertainty about how to deal with it, as Katulak noted the existence of the guarantee effectively prohibited districts from creating cash reserves to cope with property tax shortfalls.

“We’re going to be looking into all options. Whether we can do that by law, we’re going to be looking at that as well,” said Warren Mierdiercks, superintendent of the Sewanhaka School District.

Mierdiercks estimated that the impact of making up for shortfalls due to tax assessment challenges would cost districts an average of $2 million.

“This is going to be very difficult to put together a budget that’s going to be a 2 percent increase,” Mierdiercks said, acknowledging the need for school districts to minimize budget growth. “It’s not a very good financial picture.”

School districts with sizable commercial tax bases could incur a larger hit since commercial tax appeals are a common source of annual tax shortfalls.

“I’m very worried about it. For Mineola, with its commercial tax base, it mean millions of dollars for us,” said Michael Nagler, Mineola superintendent of schools. “The thing I find most egregious is that county cannot provide a dollar figure for what they supply to the Mineola school district. I don’t how these guys voted.”

Nagler said the Mineola school district would have to find some way to start building a reserve now to avoid a “spike” in its tax levy the year before the guarantee is eliminated.

Thomas Dolan, Great Neck superintendent of schools, also expressed frustration about the lack of any financial guidelines by the county as he criticized the timing of the Republican cost-cutting tactic.

“With the governor’s proposal of a tax cap, it does not make any sense to have a tax cap and for the county giving us new liabilities at this time. The tax cap is a strong determinant upon what the districts can do,” Dolan said.

Dolan said eliminating the guarantee would not represent any cost savings, since taxpayers would still be paying the freight through school taxes.

Lorna Lewis, superintendent of the East Williston School District, estimated that the shortfall would cost her district more than $600,000 annually, which would represent a 1.3 percent increase on its current budget.

“It’s still devastating for us because we’re a small district. This is devastating for districts as we move into the probability of moving into a 2 percent [property] tax cap.”

At last week’s county budget hearings, Mary Jo O’Hagan, vice president of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, cited a 1976 letter from then Nassau County attorney James Catterson to then Gov. Hugh Carey that stated any departure from the county guarantee “would prove to be an administrative and financial nightmare” for county school districts.

“Perhaps some of you believe that the way out of a budget crisis is to foist your obligations on to other governments,” O’Hagan told the county legislators. “Perhaps some of you believe that you have the authority to do so.”

Evan Nemeroff contributed reporting to this story.

The Great Neck South girls volleyball team finished the 2010 regular season as Conference III champions by going undefeated with a 14-0 record. The Blazers lost their playoff game on Tuesday to South Side 3-2.

The 11 to 12-year-old Peewees are off to a red hot start! Five games into the start of the season and the team remains undefeated. Their record stands at a dignified 4-0-1. This age group is an especially difficult one to teach because the coaches have the daunting task of introducing the checking aspect into the curriculum. The Peewees upcoming home game will take place at the Andrew Stergiopoulos Ice Rink on Nov. 6 at 9 a.m. when they challenge Bronxville. On Nov. 7 the team travels to Rinx in Hauppauge where they will battle the Silver Knights. Saturday, Nov. 13, the Peewees have an early home game at 8:25 a.m. against the Skyliners, who are based out of City Ice in Long Island City.

     Great Neck Bruins Peewee team players include the following skaters: Conner Campbell, Colin Chindris, Matt Cohen, brothers, Liam and Sean Donelan. Matt Katz, Tyler Khani, Andrew Kravitz, Caleb Marks, Corey McCluskey, Nick Nikas, Darren Patten, Sheldon Plotkin, Dylan Silverstein and Justin Utic make up the rest of this year’s team. Also, Jacob Seidenberg is spending time on the Injured Reserve list. In upcoming weeks, the other Parkwood teams will be mentioned, as well as previewing upcoming games and tournaments.

The Great Neck Arts Center will honor Great Neck resident and long-time board member Jerry Sloane when the organization celebrates its 17th year in the community on Sunday, Dec. 5, at a gala at the DeSeversky Mansion on the campus of the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury.

Sloane will be named the Arts Center’s “Man of the Year” at the event. Also being honored at the Gala is Nassau County Legislator Judi Bosworth, who will receive the Arts Center’s Inspiration Award, and Arts Center Vice President of Operations Dohn Samuel Schildkraut, who will be given the Outstanding Service Award.

Being recognized for their artistic accomplishments is acclaimed Broadway and television star Melissa Errico, who will be named The Arts Center’s “Artist of Distinction,” and renowned iconic American pop-artist James Rosenquist, who will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

“The Arts Center’s annual gala is a time to look back at all that we have accomplished during our 17 years of bringing the arts to the community,” said Great Neck Arts Center founder and Executive Director Regina Keller Gil. “And, it presents an opportunity share exciting news about our upcoming plans for the future, plans that will galvanize the region and forward our mission exponentially.

“The Great Neck Arts Center has truly become a regional center for the arts,” she said. “Through our affiliation with Washington’s Kennedy Center and our extensive outreach programs, we now touch the lives of over 15,000 students in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens. We bring numerous programs in music, dance, art and drama to public school students who would not otherwise experience these enrichment opportunities. In addition, we offer teachers professional training and development workshops that demonstrate techniques in the arts that will assist them as they teach their specialized disciplines.”

The gala, which begins at 5 p.m., includes a cocktail reception and dinner, silent auction and performance, followed by a dessert reception. Honorary chairs are last year’s honorees, Diana and Jeffrey Phillips, and state Assemblywoman Michele Schimel and Saddle Rock Mayor J. Leonard Samansky. The gala chairs are past honorees and long-time Board members Michele and Ralph Heiman. Arts Center Special Events Coordinator Ronni Berger is planning the event.

Sloane, a key member of The Arts Center’s executive committee, is the partner-in-charge of the Long Island office of CPA and advisory firm Berdon LLP. He has been in practice as a CPA for more than 30 years, specializing in advising closely held organizations spanning numerous industries and professions. Sloane is involved in all aspects of accounting, auditing and taxation, assisting clients in increasing profitability, structuring and financing transactions, and preparing for succession.

He is also the producer and host of Hot Seat, a cable television show exploring current issues of interest on Long Island. Sloane is the vice president and a board member of Public Access Television Corporation, a commissioner representing the Village of Kings Point on the Great Neck/North Shore Cable Television Commission, and a board member of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.

“The Great Neck Arts Center is the centerpiece of culture for the diverse population that we serve,” Sloane said. “It presents programs that enrich and educate as well as entertain.”

Gil said: “This Gala is an opportunity to show support for the arts on Long Island and for those artists and educators in the community who work so hard to enrich the lives of our residents.”

Sponsorship for the Gala is available at a variety of levels. In addition, a keepsake commemorative journal is being published in conjunction with the event, giving members of the community an opportunity to express personal wishes to The Arts Center and its honorees by taking out a journal ad.

For further information about the Gala, sponsorship opportunities and journal advertising, call The Arts Center at 829-2570.

At this writing, the outcome of the 2010 elections are not known. So it is an appropriate time to contemplate some broader issues: What does “We the People” actually mean? What do we want and what should we expect from “The Government”?

The answer is: there is no one answer. The answer is fluid and personal.

And that’s why there are elections. You will never get 100 percent of “The People” to agree on anything (in fact, 75 percent would be an extraordinarily high acceptance), so someone has to make a decision, and that’s why we elect representatives. Presumably, they are supposed to be responsible to their constituents, but make their best judgment because they are closer to the issue and have more facts at their command. That’s the way it is supposed to be, but this election, with Citizens United unleashing billions of dollars in special interest funding, it is questionable and now our confidence in the government is all the more shaky, depending upon whether or not we voted for the representative.

Over and over again – going back to the health care reform debate and the stimulus funding – I keep hearing Republican Leader Mitch McConnell say “the American People don’t want this” or “the American People want that” and I know that he is not speaking for me. Does that mean I am not included “the American People”?

The Republicans say they are exorcised about government spending and the ballooning national debt – but only since Democrats have been the majority. They were perfectly fine with unfunded bills for war and tax cuts that drove down federal revenues even as the recession was cutting into income tax revenues overall, leaving less to reinforce the safety net.

They say “cut entitlements” and claim that this is what the American people want. But even Tea Partyers seem to want the government to keep their hands off their Medicare and Social Security (you can take from someone else, though).

I am an American People and I say we cut military spending – especially the graft and corruption that goes to private contractors like Halliburton.

I say we cut off spending to corrupt governments, including giving Pakistan billions more when this “ally” has proved two-faced.

I say I want health care reform – I want single payer or some other mechanism for universal access to basic health services – but if all I could get this time around is Obamacare, I accept that.

Why aren’t my desires included in “what the American people want” at least the way McConnell and Boehner keep using the expression.

That is what brought together 200,000 people on the National Mall for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

The vast swath of people in the center are sick of being discounted and invisible.

The crowd was incredibly reflective of the broadest spectrum of America – there was teasing that it was mostly white, but then again, so is America. But it seemed there was good representation of the great diversity of this country.

What was amazing is that their discourse was so different from the steady mantra and drumbeat on 24-hour cable “news”.

In fact, if there was any single theme that dominated the hand-drawn signs, it was against Fox News (“I get my comedy from Fox; I get my news from Jon Stewart”) and Glenn Beck (BECK: Biased Entertainers Can Kill”).

One woman carried the sign “Republican married to a Democrat, and we still love each other.”

Some of the other signs: “Extreme Moderate” “Jew Against Invoking Hitler to Score Points” “Compromise is Sexy; Lack of Reason is Act of Treason”.

It was interesting but the rally was distinctly not political – there weren’t the swipes against this politician or that candidate, this policy or that, not even an appeal to come out and vote on Election Day. The rally was about the lack of discourse.

“This is not rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of the heartland, … or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear,” Jon Stewart said in the only really serious point in the three-hour rally. “They are and we do….But we live in hard times, not end times, and we can have animus and not be enemies.

“But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two, broke. The 24-hour politico pundit perpetual panic conflictinator,” he said, “did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder.

“The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen, or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire,” Stewart said.

“We keep hearing how we don’t work together…. We work together every damn day… the only place we don’t is here [in Washington] or on cable TV… But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV; where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done….”

What compelled people to come as far away as Oregon, Wisconsin, Florida?

It was their chance – the “silent” majority” – to be heard and to know there are others who feel the same.

And yet, first thing I saw Monday morning on CNN, was the leader of the Tea Party Express being interviewed, saying that “You can’t put on television without seeing someone from the Tea Party,” and “American Morning” anchor John Roberts replies, “Yeah. It’s amazing. 18 months ago, who heard of the Tea Party?” That’s precisely the point.

The Tea Party is a media creation.

Thinking back to the Bush/Cheney days – do you remember how fear was exploited? And how we were supposed to put aside our different views of the role and responsibility of government in order to stand together, to be patriotic? We were told to put aside habeus corpus, the right of free speech, to accept government eavesdropping on journalists and citizens without a court order, and torture.

Remember how a bin Ladin tape would be released just before an Election to remind people how they should vote their fears?

Just days before the Election, an actual (not an imagined) bomb plot was foiled – in fact, it is one of several that this administration has foiled. But the Obama Administration did not trump up fear or attempt to wring “patriotism” out of it.

Obama really thought that the his election would result in people coming together to solve the multiple crises – imploding economy, terrorism, two wars, global warming. Perhaps he even believed that because the country had rallied behind Bush that the country would have rallied behind him when faced with such dire challenges. But as we know, that didn’t happen.

What should the government spend money on? Which government should spend it? Should Great Neck be responsible for footing the entire $60 million bill for a new sewage treatment plant? Should there be no sewage treatment plant at all?

Should there be no more libraries or public schools? Should we wait for water mains to break and bridges to collapse?

The “Take Our Country Back” people (Democrats were using the same phrase during the Bush/Cheney regime) say they want to go back to the good ol’ days of Eisenhower, when communities were like Pleasantville and families like “Ozzie & Harriet.” During those days, the top tax bracket paid a 91% rate. Eisenhower funded a new coast-to-coast highway system. Well, how is that different from a new electric grid now?

We see the different perspectives on view with the Republican leadership now in New Jersey (and similar thinking in Nassau County).

In New Jersey, the newest Republican darling, Governor Chris Christie, has cancelled the $8.7 billion Hudson River tunnel project – rejecting some $6 billion in federal funding – which would double the capacity for commuters between New Jersey and New York City, take 40,000 cars off the road. It would have been the largest public works project in the country, and put thousands of people to work.

Christie claimed he was concerned about the possible cost-overruns, basically fabricating numbers out of his head.

In fact, he wants to keep the $2.7 billion the state would have had to put up because the state’s highway fund is practically depleted.

As we drove back from Washington DC this weekend, up almost the entire length of New Jersey, it occurred to me that what he is really doing is subsidizing cars and Big Oil.

In fact, Christie could have easily financed New Jersey’s share by raising the gas tax in New Jersey, which is one of the lowest in the country. His claim, of course is that he does not want to raise taxes during these economic hard times. But he isn’t doing families any favors – more demand for gasoline means higher prices at the pump, and no real “competition” from public transportation. Higher carbon footprint means more health and pollution problems that families and governments have to subsidize, and more road repair and construction.

It is interesting that this project has been in the works for decades – and in the matter of days, the N.J. Gubernator can undo it, most likely for his personal political future, rather than the people of New Jersey.

It seems that federal action on global warming – which you would think is a federal responsibility – is dead. A man on C-Span said that perhaps there should be more focus on cultivating individual behavior through the capitalist, private enterprise system.

So, employers give subsidies to employees to pay for parking, he said, why shouldn’t the government require that if they give a parking subsidy, they also give a subsidy to mass transit? Otherwise, you have a market preference away from public transportation, why is that fair?. Similarly, car insurance is based on risk, he said; well, the more miles you drive the greater risk you have for an accident, so why shouldn’t insurance rates reflect miles traveled? That would be another market incentive for people to opt for public transportation.

Similarly, in Nassau County, County Executive Ed Mangano is expressing a political philosophy by pushing forward with his grand scheme to privatize the Long Island Bus. There isn’t a single example of public transportation system which is profitable, so essentially it would be giving license for a company to raise fares pretty much as high as they like – as is the case with health insurance, medical care, cable television, and on and on.

I am wondering what “We the People” means in the Nassau County Legislature – I listened for hours as one after another decried Mangano’s budget and the impact of the cuts, including shutting down the 6th Precinct. Their entreaties were ignored. So who is “the people?”

Karen Rubin

Pulse of Pennsylvania