LI education group to release 12-point plan

The long-awaited Long Island Regional Planning Council's education "action plan" to be released Thursday includes proposals ranging from enhancing BOCES program offerings as a way to "pierce school district boundaries" and expand educational opportunity to pursuing governmental remedies to soaring pension and health care costs.

The 12-point plan created by a group of teachers, administrators and others addresses "improving educational achievement, improving educational opportunities for all students and containing costs," Michael White, the council's executive director, said Wednesday.

"The fact that we had people from inside the education community join with people outside the community, new ideas were shared," said Gary Bixhorn, chief operating officer of Eastern Suffolk BOCES and a member of the council's 20-member Education Working Group. "The group moved in some new directions. I think BOCES is positioned to try to introduce some change on a regional basis."

Highlights of the plan include "regionalization," such as exploring collective bargaining for all school district employees or sharing among districts the school portion of taxes from future projects.

The plan also advocates collaboration between school districts.

"It doesn't have to be formal consolidation of the districts themselves," White said. "BOCES is the premier way of breaking through school district boundaries." Students from several school districts already take vocational and technical classes at BOCES facilities, and the plan advocates BOCES expanding its offerings.

While the plan includes legislative incentives for districts to consolidate, White said the concept "has been a lightning rod that seems to prevent action." He said consolidation was simply "one element. We don't think that's the overall solution" to containing costs and improving education.

Henry Grishman, superintendent of Jericho schools and a member of the education group, said the plan represented a "compromise of positions that I think is a strong, meaningful statement."

The group will continue to meet, push for the plan's implementation and study possible legislative efforts, White said.

The plan stated that, although the Island has some of the highest achieving school districts in the state, "our region is burdened by some of the highest property taxes in the nation, the majority of which can be attributed to the school component."