Editorials

Editorial: Time to trim down Oysterponds’ school board

The Oysterponds School continues to grab more attention than any district of its size deserves.

The door to the superintendent’s office keeps revolving and this week the person in command for only 15 months stepped down and a district consultant won the post.

Why does it seem next to impossible for a tiny school, with only 84 students from kindergarten to 6th grade, to operate without continuing personnel shake-ups and controversy of one stripe or another? Perhaps it’s a question of numbers.

The Oysterponds district is run by a seven-member school board. Compare that to the three-member New Suffolk board and, before the district merged with Mattituck, the three-member Laurel board.

Perhaps there is something to the old adage that “too many cooks spoil the broth.”

There’s no need to search for evidence that a board with seven members is unwieldy and unworkable. Recent history makes that quite clear. Cut it down to three. It worked quite well in Laurel and works quite well in New Suffolk — schools that are rarely, if ever, ripped apart by continuous contention.