Board of Education Still Talking About Co-Curricular Activities

At Wednesday evenings short Sachem Central School District board of education meeting, the only major item discussed was the co-curricular activities in the district.

There is $390,000 total for activities: $100,000 for the high schools, $25,000 for middle schools and $5,000 for elementary schools, according to the board.

As reported numerous times, building principals will have discretion for which clubs and activities will stick around for the 2011-12 school year. Much of the funding, however, goes to the stipends set up for clubs with larger overhead such as student and class government, according to Sachem Superintendent James Nolan.

“When it comes to additional funding for clubs, there is very little left after that,” he said. “There is constant and ongoing dialogue and conversation about this. We’re going to do the best we possibly can to continue to offer as many programs to our students that we can.”

All board members have expressed concern about the loss of clubs as well.

“It is on the front burner for the board of education,” said board President Rob Scavo. “We have some ideas and are reaching out to some groups to come up with solutions that will have zero impact on the students and taxpayers. This topic is not going away anytime soon. It’s something we’re looking very close at.”

In other news, the district accepted a $300,000 grant from the New York State Dormitory Authority to offset construction costs of the two new press boxes at Sachem High Schools East and North, respectively, partial replacement of the roof at East and the installation of a gasoline tank at the facilities building.

The next board of education meeting will take place Aug. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the administrative annex at Samoset. The board should be discussing elementary school class sizes then.

Notable action items

• The board of education approved a license agreement between the school district and eSchoolData, a student management system that stores all student information such as transcripts and progress reports. The annual fee is roughly $143,000 for 14,816 students at a rate of $9.69 per student.