LI schools open with small, major changes

More than 250,000 Long Island students returned Tuesday to public schools that present stark contrasts, with some districts reeling from budget cuts as others prepare to expand and carry out long-awaited renovations.

Sixty-three districts started classes, marking the biggest opening date of the season. Another 54 districts open Wednesday, and four Thursday. Three districts opened last week.

Fewer yellow buses are rolling across the Island, because a growing number of districts are eliminating late rides for students who participate in after-school activities. There also are fewer elementary bands and orchestras, sports teams and other offerings.

Islandwide, schools are experiencing their sharpest downsizing since 1991-92, when the state reduced aid during another economic downturn.

"My young one reaches kindergarten in two years, and I'm concerned about whether they'll still retain full-day kindergarten," said Diane Colorio, a mother of two.

Colorio was at John S. Hobart Elementary School in Shirley to drop off her older daughter, Alyssa, 7, who started second grade. Hobart is part of the William Floyd school district.

Like many districts that lost state aid this year, William Floyd considered cutting back to half-day kindergarten. But district officials ultimately heeded parents' pleas to keep full-day sessions -- at least for this school year.

Meanwhile, teachers said they will do their best to cope with more students in their classes. Lisa Hane has 26 pupils assigned to her kindergarten class at Hobart this year, compared with about 21 in the past.

To help with the first day of school, Hane brought in two cousins who are attending college and hoping to work some day as teachers. The extra assistance gave Hane time to calm one 4-year-old, whose sobs subsided when the teacher handed him a toy stuffed fish.

Asked how many kindergartners would be reading by spring, even with the extra teaching load, her answer was succinct: "All of them."

In Mineola, about 800 schoolchildren have been shuffled this year as the district reconfigured which grades each school will serve. The shifts were prompted by the closing of the district's Cross Street Elementary School, which is being rented to a private Jewish prep school to save money.

Meadow Drive Elementary, for example, was a school for first through fifth grades. This school year, it is for children in the first, second and fourth grades. The school is slated to switch again for the 2012-13 school year, housing classes for prekindergarten, first-graders and second-graders.

Emily Asam, 9, is new to the district's Meadow Drive Elementary School. She spent first, second and third grades at the Cross Street school. She said she is excited about the new location because it has air conditioning and pet turtles, but also nervous because of all the unfamiliar students.

"There are a lot of people I don't know," she said. "But I feel like I can make friends with them."

Across the Island, cutbacks generally are hitting hardest in the poorest districts, according to a survey by the Long Island Education Coalition, a regional school umbrella group that includes superintendents, teacher unions and others.

The survey, conducted in June, found, for example, that nearly 30 percent of low-wealth districts plan significant cuts in high-school elective courses, while only 3 percent of districts with middling wealth and 6 percent with higher wealth plan the same.

About 17 percent of low-wealth districts plan reductions in college-level Advanced Placement courses, while no districts of middling or higher wealth intend to do that.

School renovation continues in some districts -- usually with state financial assistance that was approved before the economic downturn.

Roosevelt, for instance, has transferred students out of its high school and begun reconstruction -- capping $245.5 million worth of districtwide rebuilding that is the largest such project ever undertaken on the Island. William Floyd Tuesday opened a new $57-million ninth-grade wing in its high school that will relieve overcrowding.

"It's beautiful -- my classroom is there," said Anne Ippolito, a science teacher.

For affluent districts, "cutbacks" is a relative term.

The Jericho district, where taxable wealth is nearly triple the state average, reports that class sizes could wind up slightly larger this year. At the same time, the district is adding five new high-school course electives, including Advanced Placement Chinese and art history.

In Port Jefferson, where taxable wealth is more than three times the state average, class sizes are inching up in the second and fourth grades. But Kenneth Bossert, the district's superintendent, noted that class sizes generally are still attractive -- for example, fewer than 16 pupils per class in kindergarten and first grade.

Bossert said he couldn't be sure that such small class sizes could be maintained in coming years because of uncertainty over how much tax revenue will be provided by an aging LIPA power plant in the area. But, he added, "I don't want to cry poverty on this issue."