Henican: School closure better prompt plain talk in Huntington Station

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 had been at a party in a nearby house, was shot in the leg near the school on July 11 - well, that's when the school board took drastic action.

And now the questions have 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. Some parents are nervous about sending their children to classes into what they perceive to be a dangerous area. Others are concerned about the loss of a neighborhood school. And caught in the middle, tugged in both directions, are the members of the Huntington School Board.

There may be a solution here, some way to accommodate everyone's values and concerns. But it probably won't be reached until both sides - and the board - start openly discussing what the real issues are.

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E-mail ellis@henican.com

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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, 1st 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.