The final bell rings early for Long Island schools

Daily Point

They're letting school out early!

Nearly everything about schooling in New York has been up in the air since campuses closed to students in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus. One of the biggest unanswered questions has been when the distance-learning school year would end, a calculation made more complicated by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s cancellation of spring break. 

Cuomo has not said whether schools should stop instruction early to make up for losing spring break, and neither has the state Education Department.

So over the past week or so, often on the advice of their attorneys, Long Island school districts have begun to let parents know the school year will end as much as two weeks earlier than originally planned. Lawyers John Gross and Greg Guercio, who between them represent the majority of Island districts, have counseled their clients to alter their closing dates to match the number of instructional days to what is in their contract.

“There really was no other choice if districts want to avoid being sued for extra pay once teachers have to work extra days,” Gross said, adding that the state had acknowledged it did not want districts to face that kind of liability but had gone silent on providing guidance on how to schedule the end of the school year. 

“It’s not exactly closing early,” said Rockville Centre Superintendent Bill Johnson, who sent out a letter last week explaining that the district will end classes on June 16 rather than the originally planned June 26. “We will have been open 183 days, just as we are supposed to be.”

Roger Tilles, the Long Island representative on the state Board of Regents, said school scheduling is always a local district responsibility. What was unusual this year was Cuomo’s order to skip spring break. Tilles expects pretty much all of Long Island’s districts to shut down early, but said there will be variations in how they time it, just as there are in normal years.

“I don’t think the state wanted to come in and get involved with these local contracts,” said Tilles. "The second half of June has always been kind of wasted in terms of serious learning anyway.”

Some districts did not feel they could wait any longer for the state to make a call. With Memorial Day coming up, several superintendents said teachers deserved to know when they’d be done teaching, and parents had a right to know when their children’s instruction would end.  

—Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

LaLota candidacy on the brink

Republicans retaking control of the New York State Senate this year was always a long shot, but the GOP thought it had a better-than-even-money chance of taking back the competitive 8th District on Long Island. Now even that seems to be a clearly losing bet.

The state’s top court Tuesday refused to hear an appeal to stay on the ballot by Nick LaLota, a Suffolk County elections commissioner who had the GOP, Conservative and Libertarian nominations to take on John Brooks, the Democratic incumbent from Seaford.

Last week, an intermediate appeals court voided LaLota’s candidacy, ruling that despite his taking a leave of absence from his day job to run for the Senate, his nomination was prohibited by election law.

“It would mean John Brooks gets reelected again, which was going to happen regardless,” said Sen. Mike Gianaris, who runs the party’s State Senate campaign committee. Whether it was certain or not, no opponent for Brooks means the Democrats can direct their resources to bolster other incumbents and push to win open seats upstate.

To resurrect LaLota’s nomination, GOP elections lawyer John Ciampoli had filed an emergency appeal with the Court of Appeals arguing that because of the “profound issues” raised by the coronavirus pandemic, “it would be terribly wrong to deny voters a choice.” Now the GOP has one last maneuver, arguing that the obscure committee on vacancies listed on each nominating petition can name a candidate.

“When a designating petition is filed, there is something called a ‘committee to fill vacancies’ that is included at the top of the petition. It’s usually three people (but it can be more) hand-picked by the candidate to fill a vacancy in the designation if the candidate dies, declines or is disqualified,” according to John Conklin, state Board of Elections spokesman. If the GOP goes that route, Democrats will argue that the Appellate Division said LaLota’s candidacy is “void,” which means that a substitution can’t be named.

Ciampoli seems to anticipate this possibility in his pitch to the Court of Appeals, which said the court’s refusal to hear the case “would deprive an entire State Senate District of any choice in the 2020 elections. Nearly one-quarter of a million registered voters will be effectively disenfranchised.” 

—Rita Ciolli and Mark Chiusano @RitaCiolli and @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

How entertaining

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Final Point

Podcast: SBU professor advocates for more government spending

Stony Brook University professor and Setauket resident Stephanie Kelton is a busy interviewee these days as a guru of modern monetary theory, which suggests that it’s OK for central governments to spend more money to, say, maintain a full-employment economy.

That perspective is being welcomed  more than usual by Democrats and even some Republicans as Congress appropriates trillions to fight the coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn. 
Listen to Kelton make her pitch about MMT on Episode 21 of “Life Under Coronavirus”: “The risk is doing too little,” she says.

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano