Report cites disparities among LI school districts

When university researchers visited the mostly white and affluent Cold Spring Harbor district, they heard of parents willing to spend as much as $15,000 a year for private tutors so their children could pass exams. Researchers also heard of local sports boosters so generous with donations that the district could afford to shoot hundreds of free T-shirts from a pop-up air gun to generate excitement at pep rallies.

In contrast, when researchers visited mostly minority Hempstead, they got reports of hundreds of black and Hispanic students assigned to portable classrooms - some up to 20 years old - because aging schools had been shut down. Many students were said to be barred from writing in workbooks, due to supply shortages that required those workbooks to be shared with other classes.

Impact of disparities

Disparities among five Long Island school districts are the subject of a report released Thursday by the Long Island Index, a foundation-funded project that encourages regional approaches to solving economic and social problems.

A previous Index report published in January found the Island's fragmented school system limits opportunities for students in low-income communities across the entire region, compared with their wealthier counterparts. The latest report takes an in-depth look at the impact of those disparities in a selected sample of districts economically and demographically diverse.

"Building 124 walls between 124 districts has led to great social injustice, intolerable property tax costs and will ultimately lead to failure," said Nancy Rauch Douzinas, publisher of the Index and president of the Rauch family foundation, headquartered in Garden City.

The new study, "Why Boundaries Matter: A Study of Five Separate and Unequal Long Island School Districts," was prepared by eight researchers from Columbia University's Teachers College.

The report does not identify the five districts visited, except by pseudonym. Newsday identified the districts, primarily through matchups of enrollment and achievement statistics contained in the report, much of it previously published. In addition, many details of district operations described by researchers had previously appeared in Newsday.

Two districts, Lawrence and Long Beach, confirmed they had participated in the study. The other districts identified by Newsday were Cold Spring Harbor, Elmont and Hempstead. At one point, the report appears to slip in its use of pseudonyms and refers to "Hempstead educators."

The research team's leader, Amy Stuart Wells, Thursday criticized Newsday's decision to identify districts. Wells said she had promised districts anonymity, and that revealing their names would discourage future participation. She called Newsday's approach "unprofessional and bad journalism."

Minorities being affected

One major issue addressed in the report is disparities in educational opportunity between whites and minorities, even within districts that are racially diverse. In Long Beach, for example, researchers found that students were tracked by the time they hit the middle grades, with most whites going into honors classes and most blacks and Hispanics headed for less-advanced classes.

Researchers noted, however, that Long Beach was trying to open up its system - in part, by allowing students themselves to request placement in honors classes, rather than relying on teacher recommendations. District Superintendent Robert Greenberg said Thursday those efforts were succeeding and "honors classes no longer exist in grade six, only in seventh and eighth."

Charles Renfroe, president of Hempstead's school board, said he was unaware of the report until contacted by Newsday. When told of its contents, he was skeptical of the findings, saying, "We don't have any 20-year-old portable classrooms; there may be a few that are 15 years old."

Much of the report's most biting criticism is aimed at the Lawrence school district. There, an all-white school board, dominated by parents who send their children to private Orthodox Jewish yeshivas, makes decisions affecting public-school children who are increasingly black and Hispanic.

Researchers do acknowledge that the school board recently has invested money in wireless Internet technology for public schools. They also report, however, that due to budget cutbacks, those schools are unable to run any late buses for students who stay after class for sports or other activities.

Meanwhile, researchers say, the district pays nearly $10 million to transport other students to more than 100 private schools - a practice permitted by state law.

Asher Mansdorf, vice president of Lawrence's school board, Thursday denied researchers' assertions that the district is "siphoning off" public funds for private education. He added that the board has put more money into repairing the district's high school than any board "in 47 years."