A special meeting of the North Shore Board of Education was held Monday night, March 26, in the high school cafeteria to review student achievement. The meeting began with a presentation by North Shore students of their trips overseas during the February break. Two groups of students participated in exchange programs to St. Malo, France and Brighton, England, where they stayed with host families, and traveled to Paris and London and visited many sites nearby. Members of the Latin Club visited Italy, traveling from Venice to Rome, stopping in Florence, Capri and Sorrento. The North Shore Orchestra traveled to Germany and the Czech Republic performing with the Potsdam and Jena Youth Orchestras as well as giving their own concerts to enthusiastic audiences. Each group praised their experiences abroad as overwhelmingly valuable and thanked the school district and their chaperones for this unique opportunity.

After the student presentations, the public was given time to ask questions of the board on any subject. A recent Newsday article described the purchase of a defibrillator by the Northport School District where a 14-year-old student died after being hit in the chest with a lacrosse ball. Elaine Braithwaite of Glen Head asked if North Shore was considering a similar purchase. Dr. Root announced that discussions with the director of physical education, Laura Orticelle, were ongoing and that it had been recommended that one machine be purchased for each of the three playing fields in the district at a cost of $3,000 each. It was also suggested by another parent that first aid be offered as part of the North Shore curriculum and that first aid kits be readily available at all school events.

John Laruccia of Sea Cliff presented more signed petitions to the board asking for the addition of Italian to the school's language department. The letter which accompanied the petitions points out that most schools on Long Island now offer Italian as part of their curriculum. Dr. Root announced that the possible addition of Italian would be part of the staffing discussions at the next board meeting. After the final staffing decisions are made on Monday, April 2, the Senior Humanities choices would also be announced. He then said, when asked, that information on the future form of the honors program at North Shore would be presented to the public in two to three weeks.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to reports given by Superintendent Robert Root and the four curriculum heads for English, social studies, math and science. Each explained their part in the State Education Department testing program administered to all students in the state. Results are based on 45 SED standards and 13 regents examinations required by the SED.

The State Education Department provides the core curriculum in all New York state schools. However, Dr. Root was quick to point out that the standards of achievement for North Shore students are higher than expected by the SED and that instruction and assessment in this district extends beyond the SED core curriculum.

Examples of the content and grading standards of the 4th and 8th grade exams as well as the high school AP and Regents exams are available through the school office. Results recently printed in Newsday caused concern for parents from Glen Head where the scores were clearly lower than at Sea Cliff or Glenwood Landing. Dr. Root and the board were looking into the discrepancy in scores but felt uneasy about adopting many of the "inappropriate methods" used by other school districts to improve test results. Saturday classes, grouping students by ability, taking a majority of class time for teaching "to the test" are all methods used in many Long Island schools to raise test scores. However, the educational value of this kind of teaching is in question and runs contrary to the philosophy at North Shore.

The next board meeting will be held on April 2 at 8 p.m. in the high school library. The staffing section of the budget will be the focus of the board's discussion.