My name is Louise Wilkinson and I am here today from the Riverhead Parent Teacher Organization Executive Council.
This council, through our elected officers, represents the parents of the Riverhead Central School District. For the past six years, we have brought wagons full of flowers to each of you, requesting your support for more equitable state aid. We wanted to remind you that Riverhead was growing and growing. We still have not stopped growing but, as I am sure you are aware, we are faced with some serious decisions. Presenting flowers is not going to work this year. Riverhead is a very traditional, diverse and small community that sincerely supports its school and youth. Decisions about our school budget must be made prior to April 1st and we are struggling with how much of a burden we can place on an already strained community. On Wednesday, January 29th, Speaker Sheldon Silver spoke about tough choices versus wrong choices for this budget year. In Riverhead, if we are to keep our children first and leave none behind, we have no choices.
     Twenty years ago, when my oldest son began kindergarten in Roanoke Avenue School, he had already spent three years in a playgroup and nursery school. He was frustrated because at least fifty percent of his class had not experienced holding a pencil. The teacher spent a lot of the half-day time going over much of the knowledge he had been exposed to in his younger years. By the end of the school year, the class had only reached to the letter N in the alphabet. Because of his frustration and boredom, I thought I had a kindergarten school drop out. Today, we have a full day kindergarten, universal pre-k and many nonprofits such as Headstart that will assist those families who do not have the opportunity of tuition nursery schools. But, our population statistics reveal that still one third of our kindergarteners have not had any school experience. Can you imagine the frustrations of a teacher that learns some of her students cannot hold a pencil, yet others want to forge ahead? At the present time, a teacher aid may be available to work with the one third of the class that needs to catch up in order to not be left behind. Roanoke Avenue Elementary school, today, has the distinction of receiving the award for a national school of excellence. We work hard trying not to group or track the students but provide a good mix of student levels so they help and support each other, within each classroom. Teachers in all our schools learn what each classroom is doing. There is an ongoing goal of coordinating all curriculum among each of our elementary schools in order to provide broad base uniformed knowledge to each student. Our elementary schools now come together at the fifth grade level and it is important that each student, no matter what elementary school they attend, has had the same opportunities for learning. All teachers attend summer workshops in late June and early September to develop any new curriculum and set unified goals for their grade level. For the past six years, newly hired teachers of the Riverhead School District participate in the New Teachers' Institute for four days in late August. They tour the entire 100 square mile district on a school bus and become aware of the whole picture.
       When the students reach fifth grade, they attend Pulaski Street School. This is an old building that was once a high school. Most of the high school lockers have been removed and small learning centers for one on one tutoring and special education services have been constructed.  Those parents and grandparents that graduated from Pulaski Street School are continually amazed at the creative use of space that the past and present building principals have designed. The fifth and sixth grades are important years to develop positive decision-making skills that will affect the student's life decisions. A local non-profit, the Riverhead Community Awareness Program, has designed a program utilizing volunteers that provide age appropriate information in a classroom setting giving correct information on tobacco, alcohol and other drug use. Each student, approximately 700, attends a series of seven lessons and the year's work culminates with a gift of a T-shirt and a Just Say No march down Main Street, Riverhead. This is a program, with the assistance of teachers, parents and community volunteers that has been continuing for over 20 years. As in each of our schools, the nurses are a conduit for providing services, clothes, food and other basic needs to those families that have come upon hard times through the loss of jobs, moving into district or death. Pulaski provides a clothing closet for winter coats and other cold weather items that children sometimes are without. Approximately 40% of the all Pulaski students are entitled to free or reduced lunch.
     Riverhead's Middle School is a hotbed of issues and activity. We have developed a zero tolerance level that has been strictly enforced. We also have provided those students who may choose not to take this policy seriously with an alternative setting for learning. The school has become so much better. We are concerned about gangs and are looking to put some anti-gang curriculum in place but, even with community volunteers, there is a need for funding. At the present time, we need more counselors and more social workers, but with the cuts coming down and our total student population rising another 2%, easily another 100 students will need to fit somewhere. We must maintain what is already in place. To lose counselors and give up the alternative school would take steps backwards from the requirement the nation has put forth to ensure a safe place for our students to be educated. Riverhead High School is a safe place. We have developed a security team that encompasses the entire district. They are stationed in the high school and very often are local community people who know and care about the children. There is also the opportunity for a student to attend the alternative school, if behavior problems arise. We have numerous advanced placement and college level courses, one of very few high schools that offer Latin and Greek. Can you imagine, for a minute, the loss to a student if he is unable to complete his high school career in the subjects he has been studying because this courses cannot be offered?
     Please think for a moment of a classroom of increased size, because teachers needed to be let go, with a diverse population at different educational levels. The frustrations many of the students will have on a daily basis will give rise to increased violence and failures in our schools. This is not the goals that have been described to the voters during the election process. We keep hearing the refrain, it's not our fault. In the words of Jack Nicklaus, Focus on remedies, not faults. What can we as district choose to let go? What programs can we stop? I am here today to ask what we, the parents of the Riverhead School District students, can do to prevent these cuts and tax increases to our families from happening. From my descriptions, you can understand that, although we have problems and issues, we are heading in the right direction, to be placed under such an unfair burden as an almost 18% cut would limit much of what makes our district good. We have been doing well with what we have, but our parents, taxpayers, teachers, our custodians, bus drivers, security, teaching support staff, our nonprofits, even our administrators are stretched as far as we can. We don't have any choices left, not a tough choice, not a wrong choice that will not severely, directly impact our children and their education. Thank you