Nassau and Suffolk Learning Centers will both close

After 40 years of educating students with learning and emotional disabilities, the Nassau and Suffolk Learning Centers will both close, administrators there said Friday.

About 75 staffers at the unique alternative high schools were dismissed Friday. The Learning Centers in Port Washington and Bay Shore were operated by the nonprofit Education & Assistance Corp. and served about 100 students.

"We have educated more than 4,000 students since we started this program," said Lance W. Elder, president of EAC. "We are heartbroken for the students, for the staff."

Corporation officials said in a statement that the closure resulted from recent guidance issued by the state Education Department regarding contracting for educational services. Public school districts paid the Learning Centers to educate their students.

But the state issued a memorandum last summer clarifying that public schools cannot contract with not-for-profit entities for core academic instruction.

Elder said he is trying to find a way to reopen the program in the fall.

"I am not giving up by any stretch of the imagination," he said.

Laura Beecher, school psychologist and administrator at the Nassau Learning Center, said the staff was devastated. Many employees have worked there for years, she said.

"We have been able to treat the students that nobody wants or knows how to handle," she said. "We take the student who is so high-risk [that] if they come here, they will turn their lives around."