Huntington district ponders reopening Abrams school

Jack Abrams Intermediate School - the Huntington Station school shuttered because of a spate of violent incidents in its surrounding neighborhood - may not be closed for good.

The Huntington school district's long-range facilities planning committee presented three options for reconfiguring schools in the space-strapped district at a meeting Monday. Two of the three proposals included reopening Abrams, which was closed in July.

The proposal, which will not be voted on until at least October, received mixed reviews from a group of about 100 at the meeting, held at Abrams.

"The neighborhood faces challenges, but we need all the physical resources we have in our district," said Adam Spector, a Huntington resident who lost a bid for the school board.

Matt Harris, a Huntington Station resident, said: "Crime needs to go down before they do anything in Huntington Station."

The district now sends its fifth- and sixth-graders to Woodhull Intermediate School. Fourth-graders are spread through all of the district's primary schools, which previously housed just kindergarten to third grade.

One redistricting option would reopen Abrams and use it to educate all of the district's fourth- and fifth-graders, planning committee member Michele Kustera said. Another possibility is to keep Abrams closed and send all fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders to Woodhull, she said. A final option would send all fourth- and fifth-graders to Woodhull and revisit a former plan to send all sixth-graders to Jack Abrams, she said.

The options could necessitate building additions to the schools, school officials said. Huntington voters in August rejected a referendum to spend the district's entire $2 million capital reserve fund on an addition to Woodhull Intermediate School.

John Paci, school board vice president and a nonvoting member of the long-range planning committee, said before the meeting that the failed referendum was a setback for the committee.

Members were "basing all their assumptions on the classrooms being built at Woodhull," he said.

The school board voted to close Jack Abrams School in July because of safety concerns - prompted by the July shooting of a teenager near campus and other incidents - in its neighborhood.

Officials have said the closing of Jack Abrams School added 82 to 175 students this year to the affected schools.

Board president William Dwyer said he considered Monday's meeting "informational."

"You always have concerns about how many people you're putting in a building," he said, adding that the first few days of school "went very well" despite the cramped quarters.