Elementary students in the Mattituck-Cutchogue School District will be introduced to world language classes this year and secondary foreign language classes will begin in seventh grade rather than eighth, Superintendent Anne Smith said. READ
Tag: Oysterponds School Distict
School property tax relief is coming next school year for veterans living in the Oysterponds School District. (more…)
Shortly before last month’s vote on a resolution to accept a $150,000 bequest from the estate of Helen Chalmers, Greenport School District Superintendent Michael Comanda asked the Board of Education if anyone knew of the recently deceased Orient resident.
No hands were raised.
Ms. Chalmers, who died last fall at 82, didn’t have children who attended school in the district. In fact, she never had any children. No close family, either. (more…)
Residents will head to the polls Tuesday to vote on their local school budgets. (Credit: Katharine Schroeder, file)
Taxpayers in the five Southold Town school districts will vote on the 2014-15 spending plan for their schools Tuesday. There are no contested school board races.
Polls open at 3 p.m. and close at 9 p.m. Tuesday, except for Greenport where polls are open from 2-8 p.m.
For complete guides of each North Fork school district, click through the following links:
The public hearing at the Oysterponds school board meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. (Katharine Schroeder file photo)
The Oysterponds school board is scheduled to discuss a possible tax exemption for local veterans again at its meeting Tuesday evening. (more…)
JULIE LANE FILE PHOTO | Francoise Wittenburg speaking during a recent school meeting in Orient.
The hunt for a new Oysterponds School principal is over.
The Oysterponds Board of Education on Friday selected Francoise Wittenburg, one of the two finalists who met with the public last week.
She will be given a three-year contract, but salary information wasn’t yet available.
Ms. Wittenburg is currently assistant principal at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville, N.Y., but her family lives on Long Island and she has been wanting to return to the area, she said.
She was chosen from among 45 applicants. James Williams, an elementary assistant principal in the Three Village School District in Setauket, was the other finalist.
During her session with the public, Ms. Wittenburg spoke of the importance of intervening when students first experience academic difficulties, rather than waiting for test results to confirm a problem.
She also pledged frequent communication with the community and said her approach to education embraces critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and an emphasis on writing skills.
The New York State Education Department has ruled that the Oysterponds Board of Education was within its rights last summer to lop three years off its five-year contract with the Greenport School District, which currently educates Oysterponds junior and senior high school students.
The state ruling, handed down Wednesday, said the agreement was not valid because a long-term contract with Greenport would have had to be approved by voters.
The issue became contentious last summer after a lame-duck Oysterponds Board of Education extended the original three-year contract between the districts, set to expire in June 2012, by two years. The extension brought the contract expiration to June 2014.
But just two months later, new board members Deborah Dumont, Dorothy-Dean Thomas and Thom Gray — who joined the board in July 2010 — along with board member Kathy Syron voted in August 2010 to not only end the two-year contract extension, but to lop one year off the original three-year contract. Ms. Syron’s term expires at the end of the month.
Former board president Walter Strohmeyer, who voted in favor of the contract extension in June 2010, insisted that there was no requirement for a referendum since the contract was with Greenport, the district which has been educating Oysterponds secondary students for many years.
Two other board members — Linda Goldsmith and Krista De Kerillis — were absent the night the new board voted last August.
“I’m disappointed,” Greenport Superintendent Michael Comanda said about the state ruling, adding that he had hoped the Department of Education would uphold his district’s challenge to the rollback. But he said now the alternative is to either try to pursue legal action or, preferably to him, negotiate a new contract with Oysterponds.
Ms. Dumont, who is now Oysterponds board president, had no comment on the ruling. She said had just been informed of the decision and needed to speak with the district’s legal counsel and members of the board.
For complete coverage, see the June 23 edition of The Suffolk Times.