Great Neck Public School district voters came out in droves on Tuesday, Feb. 14, but defeated the proposed 2017 Bond Referendum by 113 votes. Of the 3,241 votes cast, 1,677 voted No and 1,564 voted Yes.
The proposed Bond Issuance of $85,900,000, which would have been payable over 20 years, would have financed more than 60 educational and building enhancements, as well as 30 critical structural projects.
After the vote, Board of Education President Barbara Berkowitz said, “Today’s Bond Proposition came at the conclusion of years of meetings and assessing the needs of our school district. While we have always maintained that this was the community’s bond, it is clear that portions of the community who were not in favor have spoken,” she continued.
“More upsetting than this loss is the fact that this bond has polarized our community. Therefore, before we can contemplate our next step, we will need to determine how best to repair this fracture,” Berkowitz concluded. “Our disappointment is obvious, but we will continue to do all in our power to address the needs of our children, our schools and our community.”
Read “Vote For The School Bond Referendum On Feb. 14” to see what the bond was slated to upgrade.
Perhaps it was a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the current school board. How did the buildings get into such a state of disrepair after years of giant budgets? Why was nothing included in the bond except bringing failing overcrowded buildings up to a minimal acceptable standard rather than a vision for making the district innovative and ahead of the standard? Why was the community advisory board only created late in the game when the proposal was essentially done and the vote already scheduled? Where was the detail in the proposals? Why hasn’t the expensive redundancies caused by running two high schools as completely separate entities not addressed? No creativity, no innovation, no thoughts of reducing and modernizing energy usage, no enhancements of arts or science education, athletic fields that are worse than any school anywhere. I would rather triple the bond and pay $1000 extra in taxes if a realtor could show my house in 10 years and tell a prospective buyer that the school system has things that they can’t get anywhere else. I’ve had three kids go through this system, I’ve never had a conversation with people from other places and been able to state a single thing about the Great Neck schools that’s better than where their kids go to school. All three of my kids are different in the way that the school district failed to provide what they needed, but fail them it did. They all thrived in college and all three look back at their high school educational experience as awful.