Journal News, February 2, 2010
The poor response rate to the Ossining school district re-registration process may be disconcerting but should not be surprising. All children go through a registration process when first entering the district and many parents do not see the need to re-register, especially annually, which is neither practical nor cost-efficient. Until the process is completed, these parents who "hypothesize" that many students may live outside the district and feel that the district is hiding data should respect the process and wait for the results. If, in fact, there are a significant number of nonresident students, then the district should look at instituting a periodic sampling to enforce the residency rules. Ossining has a very competent board and administration, which, I am certain, will perform a thorough and fair assessment. Lastly, I would hope that no child would be required to leave our schools this late in the school term. At this late stage, there would be little savings to the district and immeasurable hardship to the children.
Durando Saccente
Ossining
Journal News, February 1, 2010
Re "Ossining residents push schools to crack down on residency," Jan. 27 article:
I am perplexed by what was not reported — that 203 of 1,293 families have failed to reregister their children in the Ossining school district. This represents 22.6 percent of the targeted population. Of 4,300 students, if the failure-to-register rate of 22.6 percent is applied to the entire population, there are potentially 974 students who do not belong in the school district. Or, a reduction of the school district's population by 974 students represents 46 empty classrooms, staffed by 46 teachers.
It is a given that all children in the State of New York have the constitutional right to attend public schools in the district in which they live. Schools Superintendent Phyllis Glassman's statements leave the reader with the impression that if the school district finds a student ineligible to attend Ossining schools because they live in another school district, then that student is denied the right to attend school. This is patently false; they would simply have to attend school where they live. That the school district was reaching out to the families who did register "but did not have a firm time as to when that effort would end," actually has a ring of truth to it. If she does not have a timeframe to solve a problem, then she is not seeking to solve it. Or, worse, she simply does not care to solve the problem.
If the audit leads to a substantial reduction of students, the school district loses state aid, which could lead to layoffs.
William J. Hamilton
Ossining
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