Poor Herman! He seems to be suffering from a bunker mentality or possibly had another bad week. First, he attacks me in the Tribune's Opinion Page (Clarification About the Levittown School District) on Jan. 14. Then, in a highly uncharacteristic manner, during the January school board meeting, Herman publicly excoriated Richard P. Mills, NY State commissioner of education, with a vile and unwarranted verbal diatribe. "I wouldn't walk across the street to meet Commissioner Mills," was probably one of Herman's mildest comments.

I've known Herman Sirois nearly 20 years since hiring him as Levittown assistant superintendent for instruction on Aug. 26, 1981. Herman, in my opinion, has been one of Levittown's finest assistant superintendents for instruction, although I wouldn't give him high marks for his tenure as superintendent of schools. None the less, he is superintendent of schools, and received my support following a failed December 1991 attempt by the school board to oust him; for, among other allegations, "his management style." That's why, I suspect, he likes to surround himself with weak and ineffective school board members. Trustees who don't ask questions and are easily manipulated. Ask yourself, when was the last time you heard from a member of Levittown's school board on any issue? Chances are, never!

Herman makes a number of wild assertions in his letter, regarding Levittown's fourth grade English arts test results, by claiming, "...all six of the Levittown elementary schools were recently cited by the New York State Department of Education for being among the highest achieving schools in the entire state." If that statement is accurate then we may as well lock our school doors and throw the keys away. We're all in trouble! The fact remains that 213 Levittown youngsters, or fully one-third of our current fifth graders scored at Level I (No evidence of proficiency) or Level 2 (Needs extra help) in last spring's fourth grade English arts test. Levittown's average scores, as I previously wrote, were slightly above the bottom one-third of the 53 Nassau County school districts housing elementary schools. Fortunately, Herman comes closer to reality on the results of the fourth grade math test where 91 percent of the 637 Levittown students tested demonstrated proficiency at Levels 3 or 4. Students in the Island Trees and Wantagh school districts, by way of comparison, achieved proficiency rating of 95 percent.

I won't embarrass Herman with the results of our eighth grade language arts or math tests. Suffice it to say that Levittown outperformed Roosevelt, Hempstead, Uniondale, Westbury and several other Nassau County school districts.

I suspect that Levittown's poor showings, on several of these standardized tests, are the primary reason for Herman's animosity toward Commissioner Mills. After all, accountability is a word that hasn't been heard around Levittown schools for years.

Now that our board of education, thanks to Herman, has its own personal public relations guru, maybe they could publish Levittown's standardized test results. Let's see how well Levittown students have really performed in comparison to their peers in Nassau County. However, let's not obfuscate the results, as Herman likes to do, by comparing them to New York State averages which are already ridiculously low. After all, as I like to remind our board of education, "The price of integrity is eternal vigilance."