The Levittown Board of Education's monthly meeting moved to the auditorium of Levittown Memorial Education Center on April 11, to cater to the large number of district students who have achieved excellence in music during this school year. Dozens of elementary, middle and high school students walked to the podium to receive their certificates of merit for all-county honors in band, orchestra and chorus.

The meeting was then moved to the board room, where Frank Giuliano, vice president of Dollars for Scholars, was honored for his work in helping to raise $14,000 that will be used for scholarships at MacArthur and Division.

"Dollars for Scholars is not part of the Levittown School District, but it is like the PTA. It's an outside organization but does a lot for the students in the community," board President Gina Interdonato explained.

Following the ceremonious portion of the meeting, there was an assortment of other details discussed, including Assistant Superintendent Victor Longaro's report on the district's social studies curriculum. The performance of Levittown students compared to the rest of the county has proved to be far superior to the rest of Nassau, with rates 4 to 12 percent better in different areas including passing and mastery of social studies.

The Public Be Heard mostly centered around the impending vote on whether the board would decide to honor the implementation of new tennis courts to be built along Wantagh Avenue, further down toward the existing T-ball fields and handball courts. The project would cost $389,500, which would then open the door for the land swap between the district and the Wantagh Fire Department to occur.

Residents voiced concerns including the loss of half of a practice field, with practice space for athletics already limited. Superintendent Dr. Herman Sirois agreed saying, "this property was originally supposed to be for only one school," in reference to Salk and MacArthur. In addition, PTA President Cathy Kenny voiced concern that the new courts could be damaged by graffiti, just as the nearby handball courts have been. She said cameras and lighting would be a good idea to prevent that.

However, lighting and cameras were not part of the $389,500 base bid that was to be voted on, nor was there an exact description of what the bid entailed.

"We need to know what we're voting on here," Board Trustee Mike Moriarty said at one point. Despite that, in the end the board approved the new tennis courts by a 4 to 3 vote. However, they did emphasize that the old courts won't be torn down until the new ones are in place for play.

Intertwined with the tennis courts is the aforementioned land swap. If the courts are moved, it doesn't necessarily mean the land swap is a slam dunk, as an $81,000 environmental impact study still has to be approved by the board before anything happens. That was not approved on this night, as details were light on what the study entailed.

Any real progress in the Salk/MacArthur traffic plan is also still far off.

"Even if we told Nelson & Pope (traffic engineering firm) to go ahead with the study tomorrow, I would guess that would take a couple of months at least," Assistant Superintendent Jeffrey Carlson said.

Further connected to the tennis courts and land swap, was the dry run of buses done during the spring break at MacArthur, that was to test the feasibility of changing the bus pattern between Salk and MacArthur. The test was done with only four buses, and the board is in the process of scheduling another session to assess the situation with as many buses as possible. Twenty six would be running in a normal situation, but due to construction, that would need to be done if the plan was to go through, there would still need to be far fewer buses included, according to Joseph Ewald, the district's supervisor of maintenance and grounds.

In other news, as reported two weeks ago in the Levittown Tribune, the board rejected a Principles of Engineering class slated for the 2007-08 school year at Division Avenue, but due to a change of class size to one class of 18 students, the class will now be available. The cost is $175,000 but it will not change the total number in the budget.

There was also discussion on furthering security and safety in two different aspects. The board is looking at adopting the current behavioral code of conduct for athletics as universal for all extracurricular activities. Secondly, they are investigating improving the 27 cameras and recorders on school buses, by possibly switching over to digital video recording to enable more efficient and rapid review of the material.

Two junior girls' lacrosse players spoke about the interest of creating girls' field hockey team at MacArthur. A petition signed by 33 prospective players was left with the board; District Athletic Director Keith Snyder said they will further look into the possibility of one.

A generous gesture by longtime board member Kenneth Auer, Sr. to pay $2,000 for a new baseball scoreboard at DAHS was rejected by the board. While the district will pay for it, honoring the late coach Doug Robins, they thanked Mr. Auer for his offer.

The next regular board meeting will take place on Wednesday, May 8 at 8 p.m. at LMEC. For more information log on to www.levittownschools.com.