[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on August 24, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]

This article is the fourth in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous or next articles.

Bureaucracy is destroying Malverne public schools. That is the sentiment that has driven a Malverne couple to propose opening a charter school in neighboring Lakeview, “across the Ocean,” in local parlance, divided as the two communities are by Ocean Avenue.

Matt and Jodi Morello are both teachers. They don’t have any children, and neither attended Malverne public schools. But they are passionate about education and the futures of their nieces and nephews, godchildren and the children of friends and neighbors. The Morellos are concerned about low state-exam scores, reduced art and music instruction, and students who they say are being pushed through the Malverne school system only to end up ill-prepared for college and the working world.

“Seventy-five percent of Malverne residents send their children to private schools,” Matt Morello, 44, told the Herald. “If that’s not an indictment of the [public] schools, I don’t know what is.”

Some Malvernites attribute the private-school trend to the district’s turbulent history. It was forcefully integrated in 1965, after two years of protests, demonstrations, boycotts and delays. Many outraged white parents refused to send their children to the Woodfield Road School, which had been the “colored” school. Angry black parents who lived in Lakeview boycotted the schools. Some parents opened secret schools in their homes, and others staged blockades. Eventually the district was fully integrated, but mostly white Malverne and mostly black Lakeview were never unified.

“You have one school serving two communities, and neither community is happy,” Morello said. “This calls for an alternative.”

The Morellos have explored the idea of a charter school for four years, and recently decided to bring it before the entire school community. According to Jodi, 49, who has taught fine arts at a number of schools, children who attend charter schools perform better than public-school students because charters, which are run by teachers and controlled by the state, have smaller class sizes and are more autonomous than public schools. In many public schools, Matt added, teachers are pressured to push students through by administrators who are under pressure from the state to have high graduation rates.

“Teachers know how to get kids to read and write and do math,” said Matt, who teaches high school English in Queens. “At a charter school, they’re not entrenched with top-down bureaucratic curriculum. … Schools have gotten very political. Money is involved, high salaries — the administration has lost sight of what’s needed.”

The Morellos say they have found that student performance at a number of public schools improved significantly after charter schools were opened in their communities. “It’s competition,” said Jodi. “[The public schools] have something to prove.”

For that reason alone, opening a charter school in the area would be a “win-win,” Matt said.

But Malverne schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund said he doesn’t see how a charter school would affect the quality of education in the district. “I don’t believe that this would have a material effect on the public schools,” he said. “We offer a comprehensive program in terms of academic and co-curricular activities that most charter schools cannot match and don’t have. As far as competing, we really are in our own dimension.”

‘A cry for help’
The Morellos believe the time is ripe for their idea: In recent months, they have seen the district’s problems reach a boiling point. Racial tensions exploded at several Board of Education meetings in April and May. Students protested personnel cuts. Teachers protested stagnant contract negotiations. Parents lashed out at board trustees and school administrators for making what they considered unfair budget cuts — namely to art, music and library instruction — to accommodate a “teaching-to-the-test” curriculum.

“It’s a cry for help,” Matt said.

“And people, parents are receptive to listening,” Jodi added.

Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools governed by nonprofit boards of trustees, which often include educators, community members and leaders from the private sectors. According to the New York State Education Department, charters have the freedom to establish their own policies, design their own educational programs and manage their human and financial resources. They are held accountable for high student achievement through the terms of a five-year performance contract.

Public-school districts are mandated by the state to pay the tuition of district students who attend charter schools. As they do for children who attend private schools, the districts also provide transportation and textbooks for charter school students.

For the 2011-12 school year, the Malverne school district will spend more than $295,000 to send 15 students to charter schools. According to Business Administrator Tom McDaid, the district pays about $19,000 per student.

If a charter school were to open in Lakeview, “it could be a burden to the district,” McDaid said. “Let’s just say we have an additional 10 students that go [to charter schools], I’m going to have to find another $190,000 in this budget. … If 10 students go, one from each grade, I’m still going to have the same number of teachers, I’m still going to have the same number of everything else. My cost to run the district won’t change, won’t go down, because I lose 10 kids.”

Aside from tuition costs, charter schools rely heavily on private donations and federal and state grants. Because they are run by a principal and overseen by a board of trustees, they “cut out many levels of bureaucracy,” Matt Morello said, and therefore have more money to spend on equipment, materials and teacher salaries. He noted that the Malverne district has several highly paid administrators — including Hunderfund, whose salary is more than $234,000 — but is struggling to maintain programs and hold on to staff in a weak economy.

‘Us versus them’
Before the state gives the go-ahead to open a charter school, it must have documented proof that a prospective host community wants it there. The Morellos have scheduled a meeting at the Lakeview Public Library on Aug. 30, when they hope Malverne and Lakeview residents will gather to discuss the possibility of bringing such a school to the community. They are fully aware, they say, that not everyone will be happy with the proposal.

“We don’t want to make it an ‘us versus them’ situation,” Matt said.

“We live in the community,” his wife added. “We don’t want to divide it, we want to bring it together.”

Already, however, some people are split on the idea. Laura Avvinti, a PTA mom with children in the elementary schools, takes issue with the notion that Malverne schools aren’t performing well. “It saddens me that people feel that the school district is not doing as well as they [want],” she said. “We do have really great teachers, and I’m very happy with the quality of the schools and education that my kids are getting. … Probably it will provide a lot of competition, and if a lot of the children decide to go the charter school, there will be less children in our school, which may or may not be a good thing.”

Malverne Board of Education Trustee Gina Genti said there is simply no need for a charter school. “I understand some of the community’s frustrations with the direction we’re heading in,” she said, “but I don’t think bringing a charter school — which is a long-term solution to what is probably a short-term problem — is the answer.”

Five years ago, Genti said, the district was on an upward trajectory: test scores were up, more people were enrolling their children in the public schools and the community supported the district. “That’s changed,” she said, noting that residents are frustrated with the quality of education in the district, the test scores and the exaggerated emphasis on testing. But, Genti added, those are all issues that can be corrected or improved.

Lakeview activist Rener Reed — former president of the Lakeview NAACP and mother of three adult children who went through Malverne schools — has long been vocal about problems in the school district. Reed, who grew up in Mississippi and attended Richton Colored High School there in the late 1950s, has spoken out about racial tensions in the district and her discontent with its administrators. For decades she has worked with other community activists and parents to improve the schools, sometimes succeeding, other times not. Still, she said, she doesn’t believe a charter school will resolve anything.

“I don’t think opening up a charter school is going to bring [Malverne and Lakeview] together,” Reed said. She questioned the Morellos’ motives, and why they are so interested in school district matters when they don’t have children in the school system. She also asked why a Malverne couple would want to open a school in Lakeview.

“I’m not opposed to charter schools,” Reed said, “but I am curious as to why certain people want to get into this kind of situation. … I would first say, let’s give Malverne a chance. Let’s get up there the things that are not done right, let’s see if we can’t help to make them right by putting all this on the table.”

Like Reed, Lakeview NAACP President Bea Bayley is more concerned about the people proposing a charter school than the proposal itself. “A charter school would be welcomed in Lakeview, provided that it come from the Lakeview community and reflect cultural diversity in staffing,” Bayley said. “Any outside group that would come in trying to prosper from our demographics would not be welcomed.”

The NAACP has battled with the school district over its hiring and retention practices, claiming that the makeup of the staff does not reflect the student population, which is largely black. Bayley said that there are not enough black role models in the schools, but a charter school that hires teachers from within the community could provide several.

“We need schools that focus on the needs of the children and encourage them to push beyond all perceived limitations of their surroundings,” Bayley said. “Lakeview residents need an alternative to the current system of education, which is plagued with high-paid administrators and low expectations.”

Hunderfund agreed with Genti and Reed that the district should be given a chance to correct its problems. “We would certainly want to attempt to serve the needs of every child and every parent; it’s just that sometimes people don’t express to us what it is that they don’t have that we would like to provide for them,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of communication and working together to get the end result that you want. But I do believe that Malverne public schools [offer] a high quality education.”

‘Enough is enough’
If all goes well and they receive the community support they seek, the Morellos hope to see a charter school open somewhere in Lakeview — possibly at the Lakeview library, which was once the Woodfield Road school — by September 2013. In its first year of operation, it would have only two grades, sixth and ninth, and a total of 60 students. They are still not sure how many teachers the school would have.

After the first year, seventh- and 10th-grade classes would be added for the graduating sixth- and ninth-graders, while new classes of sixth- and ninth-graders would begin. That process would continue until the charter school was operating as a grades 6-through-12 school.

Although the Morellos are well aware of the controversy their proposal has sparked, they expect people to warm to the idea after they learn more about the potential benefits of a charter school at the Aug. 30 discussion.

“Enough is enough,” Matt said. “There’s a need, there’s a problem, and our charter school can fix it.”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Race to the top’
Read the next article in the series: ‘Charter school proposal sparks heated debate’