MAY 2018 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 15
HEMPSTEAD SCHOOL CRISIS
MODULAR CLASSROOMS
GRADUATING TO PERMANENCE
By EDEN LAIKIN
The low-performing Hempstead
School District is banking on one
chance to finally get hundreds of its
elementary school students out of
“temporary” trailers they’ve been
in for more than 20 years, and into
real classrooms. But it will mean
that homeowners must agree to pay
between $80-$239 more in property
taxes annually for a few years.
Approval by voters of a $46.8 million
bond on May 15 would allow the
district to begin a three-year capital
project to demolish and replace the
shuttered Marguerite G. Rhodes
Elementary School. The project would
open up real classrooms to between
700 and 750 students in the 2021
school year – eliminating about half
the 55 portable classrooms and easing
some of the overcrowded conditions
in the three existing elementary
schools, district officials said.
Acting School Superintendent Regina
Armstrong calls the approval of the
bond “essential” to changing the
educational atmosphere for children
in a district that last year graduated
about 36.7 percent of its senior class.
“It’s not the learning environment
the school district is okay with,”
Armstrong says through a district
spokeswoman. “We want to
provide the most optimal learning
environment for our students
... the bond is essential to our
getting the children out of the
portable classrooms that were never
intended to be here this long. It’s
also crucial to helping alleviate
the overcrowding (in the other
elementary schools) and to stop the
eyesore in the village.”
The school district owns about
half the trailers that provide
the classrooms for up to 1,600
Hempstead elementary students,
Armstrong says. The other portable
units are leased by the district at a
cost of $1.5 million a year.
The district’s enrollment of 7,577 in
the 2017-18 school year is expected
to increase dramatically by 1,520
students to a total of 9,097 students
in 2025. The growth is due to an
influx of immigrants, officials say.
Hempstead School officials expect
about $28.7 million in state aid
toward the $46.8 million Rhodes
School capital project – $1.4 million
of which will go toward getting rid of
half the modular units. That would
leave a taxpayer-funded balance of
$16 million, meaning a 1.59 percent
increase to homeowners per year.
The district’s campaign for passage
of the bond vote is: “A successful
May 2018 vote means a September
2021 occupancy.”
Armstrong says that to have a better
chance of the bond vote passing, her
goal was to keep the property tax
levy low for the proposed 2018-19
school budget. The proposed $215
million budget for the upcoming
year carries a zero-percent increase
for taxpayers. The budget, bond and
two of the school board seats will all
be voted on, on the same ballot on
May 15.
The modular classrooms date back
to an even more troubling time in
the district’s history.
In 2005, a New York State
Comptroller’s audit found that
Hempstead School District spent
$2.3 million to install and rent
portable classrooms. This was
part of $5.1 million in spending
between 2002 and 2004 that the
audit called “careless.” Other
findings of the audit included about
$1.3 million in contracts awarded
without competitive bids and about
$1.1 million paid to temporary
employment agencies without
proper approvals and without
analysis of the cost-effectiveness.
This, auditors said, when “school
buildings were falling apart,
classrooms were overcrowded,
and students were being housed in
inadequate, temporary classroom
space.”
At that time, voters had defeated
the last two budgets and a proposed
$177 million bond issue to rebuild
several of the deteriorating schools.
The approval of that would have
permitted the district to build
new school buildings, repair and
renovate others, and eliminate the
need for portable classrooms.
Asked what will happen if the
bond vote doesn’t pass on May
15, Armstrong says simply, “the
children will continue to be
educated in trailers.”
The state Department of Education
declined to comment for this story.
Hempstead has been using the same temporary trailers as classrooms for two decades.
“The portable classrooms ... were never
intended to be here this long.”