MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
No one is saying the Jack Abrams School wasn’t educating its students. No one is claiming the teaching was shoddy, the building was crumbling or the discipline was lax. The Huntington School Board voted 4-3 on Monday to shut down what, by most measures, was a well-functioning intermediate school.
And all because of the neighborhood.
This part of Huntington Station has struggled with street violence and crime, though mostly at times when the kids weren’t around. There’s been some local gang activity. And when a 16-year-old girl, who’d been at a party in a nearby house, was shot in the leg in the school parking lot – well, that’s when the school board took the drastic action.
But wait! The questions had only begun.
Was the board unfairly blaming a school for its neighborhood? Were the children coming and going really unsafe? Isn’t it the job of law enforcement – not school officials – to police the blocks around a school? And wouldn’t shutting down this competent school deprive a struggling neighborhood of an uplifting institution? Should Huntington Station be abandoned like that?
All good questions. And all of them are informed by a fact of local life that hardly anyone wanted to discuss openly over the past few days. Don’t go looking for quotes at the public meetings or in the media. You won’t find much.
But the school board was responding to complaints largely from the relatively affluent “water neighborhoods” north of Route 25A. Most of those now asking the board to reconsider come from the less fancy blocks south of the highway and closer to the school.
Geography and class – again.
One group sees their children bused into a ghetto. The other fears the loss of a crucial institution of hope.
There may be a solution here. But it probably won’t be reached until both sides – and the board – start openly discussing what the real issues are.
500 MILLION ON FACEBOOK
1. 500 Million Links to Boring Stories
2. 500 Billion Narcissistic Status Updates
3. 500 Trillion Friend Requests Still Sitting in Limbo
4. 500 Quintillion ‘It’s Complicated’ Relationships
5. 500 Gazillion Wasted Hours a Day
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
Wasn’t this a surprise: The guy in the Darth Vader mask was ROBBING the bank – not working in the foreclosure department?… Quick show of hands: Who hasn’t found July hot enough?… Did Cheryl Mercuris really need a $500,000, 14-bedroom Bridgehampton summer rental to meet a suitable man? Wouldn’t a $300,000 rental have attracted the same class of gold-digger?… Does Ed Mangano regret he ever tried to sidestep Nassau County’s professional-services rules – or just happy he sidestepped a lawsuit?…Are 45 Woodmere families suddenly more sympathetic toward Gulf Coast residents? A gasoline spill and an oil spill aren’t quite the same – but still… With the BP spill capped (for now), is Adrienne Esposito sighing in relief for Long Island? Or is the enviro-activist still fretting about the Gulf Stream whooshing the crude our way?… Anyone seen Watson Arline? Does Watson know his old house in Brentwood is now an unlicensed animal graveyard?… What’s Long Island’s answer to Roosevelt Island’s new real-estate pitch: “Better than the ’Burbs”? How ’bout this snappy come-back: “At least we don’t have some broken-down tram!”… Instead of banning lobstering from Maine to North Carolina, will someone propose an East Coast butter ban? Wouldn’t that automatically cut into lobster demand?
ELLIS’ LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
NATHANIEL KRAMER
Former Wall Street fund jockey, former high-fashion photographer, Nathaniel Kramer prowled the docks in Montauk and Shinnecock last summer with a video camera, giving voice to the charter-boat captains and commercial fishermen. He’s back on solid ground now with a riveting documentary, “A Long Haul,” causing real waves on the film-festival circuit. “Everyone’s a character with dreams and demons,” Kramer said. “And the charter business is off 50 percent.” The crew he focuses on — Captain Bart, First Mate Curtis and a 13-year-old boy from a wealthy family who said “no” to summer camp to be a fishing apprentice – are searching for squid, a way of life and themselves.
E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican
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