The great benefits of Salk after-school programs were presented before before the Levittown Board of Education and a huge contingency of Levittown residents at the BOE meeting on March 14.

"School is so much more than just first to ninth period," Levittown Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Victor Longaro said in regard to the great extra-curricular programs at Salk Middle School.

Salk Principal Debbie Rifkin has been a proponent of extending the after-school activity program to new clubs such as the Get Moving Club, Moviemaker Club, and even the popular Ballroom Dancing Club, which she admits she was skeptical at first that middle school students would be interested in it.

"You couldn't even get in the door the day of the first meeting," Rifkin said.

Other clubs include those involving the newspaper, robotics, baking, buddies, the stock market and the drama club. This past fall the Salk Drama Club put on a performance of Oliver, and the play's stars Jesse Frye and Lisa Stockman offered a rendition of the song I'd Do Anything, for the board.

The board then awarded four extremely talented and hard-working students, who have been named valedictorian and salutatorian of their senior classes at MacArthur and Division Avenue High Schools. Michael Kohanim and Bianca Velayo are the valedictorian and salutatorian respectively at MacArthur, while Kelly Rogala and Nolan Meditz hold those roles over at Division. These four students also fit into the theme of extra-curricular activities to go along with their GPAs exceeding 98.

The curriculum report discussed an enormous change for the high school math sequence that is on tap for September 2008. Just as it was over 30 years ago, the three-year sequence will be Algebra to Geometry to Algebra II/Trigonometry.

"The state finally realized that 49 states were doing it this way, so maybe we should to," Longaro said.

Furthermore, another change that will be dealt with is the necessity to supply all students with graphing calculators, as opposed to the students' buying them themselves. This will be approximately a $200,000 cost to the district.

During the Public be Heard session, several Division Avenue football, lacrosse players and parents wore a path to the podium, all making similar statement regarding being in favor of a turf field and stadium lights at both Levittown high school football fields. The students claimed that safety would be upgraded due to better field conditions. Parents said it would keep their children off the streets.

While most residents might think of this as another tax burden, Superintendent Dr. Herman Sirois was quick to emphasize that would not be the case.

"We have opportunity for improvement here with literally no cost to the district," he said in reference to an inordinate amount of state funding.

Assistant Superintendent for Budget and Finance Jeff Carlson elaborated on that and said that it would likely be a $7.3 million project to get all this done, which would require a bond referendum to be passed. He continued to say that $2.5 million of state funding would pay off the local share, while the other $4.8 million would have to be paid off with the bond, which would then increase the budget in future years.

Toward the end of the meeting there was a moment of silence was declared to recognize the untimely death of Doug Robins who was a teacher, chairperson, athletic director and baseball coach at both Levittown Memorial and Division Avenue High Schools for 28 years.

The next regular board meeting will take place April 11, while the new budget will be adopted at the final budget meeting March 28. Both meetings are at 8 p.m. at Levittown Memorial Education Center.