Letters

Featured Letter: Is the superintendent a figurehead?

Southold School District Superintendent David Gamberg
Southold School District Superintendent David Gamberg

To the editor:

As a student in Greenport High School I was fairly surprised to hear that David Gamberg would become the superintendent of Greenport as well as retain his position in Southold. How can Mr. Comanda’s job be replaced by someone who can only be here half the time at most, when his job was one where he made over $200,000 last year and was able to retire at 55? Is the superintendent really just a figurehead for the school, someone who just represents us? And if the job can be done for two schools, why did GHS have an exclusive one for so long? For instance, Mr. Comanda is currently the superintendent of Greenport and New Suffolk.

A Newsday article written by David M. Schwartz explained how the Smithtown school district has an interim superintendent for now — Judith Elias — because their former superintendent retired. Ms. Elias is, for now, the superintendent for a district with 14,000 students. Mr. Gamberg will at most be the superintendent of 1,400 students: A tenth of a district not even in the metropolitan area, but in the same county! So, if you base an arrangement on the number of students, Mr. Gamberg might be better off representing the entire East End.

If the job for both schools can be done by one guy and it’s very cost-effective, then what have we been wasting the taxpayers’ dollars on for all these years? Is this school district just some sort of money mill where we pay administrators hundreds of thousands of dollars for jobs that are barely even replaced?

Because, for better or worse, the fact of the matter is that it’s all about the money.

Neville Reece, Greenport