I've watched the letters for close to a year now, and I'm finally compelled to write. First, thank you to Arthur Kaminsky (who for the record, Mr. Garges, I don't believe is or has ever been a teacher in Manhasset) for finally articulating the relationship between the school system and real estate values. I think that the goal of the entire school district dialogue should be to maximize the benefit, rather than just reduce the cost. This is a much more difficult thing to quantify, as there are so many variables.

Mr. Garges, you state that "I do not know of anyone who moved here from NYC in order to send their children to our schools." Now you do. My three children were all born in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. We moved to LI for the schools. Not only that, we initially moved to Port Washington (Sands Point actually), and then relocated again to specifically move in to the Manhasset school district. It was apparent that the Manhasset students were being accepted in to better colleges than were the students in Port Washington. Why do you think people move from the city to the suburbs? For that "relaxing" 45 minute commute? Your statement that "comparing teacher pay here with that in New York City is just as relevant as comparing it to Garden City or other systems in Nassau County" (grammatically incorrect) is absurd. Comparing Manhasset to Garden City, Syosset, Great Neck, etc. would be valid to an extent, (you must take into account the difference in student populations, thus economies of scale) but NYC is widely considered to be among the debacles of the American public school experience. Why would it be relevant to compare the two?

Mr. Early, I'm confused why you spent so much time (2 full columns) maligning the crew program which, if an additional coach is added at $6000 per year, amounts to .07 of the proposed athletic budget. (That's 7 tenths of 1 percent.) I have seen no evidence of any kind of cost/benefit analysis. Shouldn't we factor in the fact that the crew team raised and donated $10,000 to the Manhasset Women's Coalition Against Breast Cancer - the largest charity amount ever raised by a Manhasset HS Team? Or shouldn't we also take into account how the crew program is helping, very directly, some of our students get into schools that they wouldn't be able to get into on their academic credentials alone? In fact, I'd speculate that in the last two years, Manhasset had more students recruited and accepted from the crew program than any other athletic program outside of lacrosse.

I'm fully in favor of periodic reviews and audits to cut fat. I am not in favor of people's opinions, particularly when shown to be not based on fact, being accepted as premise. Ms. Pandelakis, I don't think anyone attacked Mr. Garges' or Mr. Early's service record or right to question - what they objected to was that they presented their opinions as fact. And some of these opinions have been shown to be just that. Any real estate agent would explain that a quality school district is a critical component of real estate values. Similarly, it is not realistic to use the "back when I was a kid" logic, as today's cost of the planes and ships Mr. Garges and Mr. Early trained in can attest.

As a parent, tangible evidence of the success of a school district is where the students are being accepted to college. This year, students have been accepted to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown, and Haverford to name a few. According to those schools, they each reject hundreds of applicants with perfect 1600 SAT scores every year. So there is something else that makes our students attractive. Perhaps it's athletics, where Manhasset has won state championships in a variety of sports in the last few years. Perhaps it's music, where a current senior won the single National Music Scholarship award as a violinist. Perhaps it's something else, or a combination of many things. But these many things are what make a high school experience, and I would be very careful before becoming myopic on the issue of costs. As anyone who has been successful in business can relate, it is the cost/benefit equation that has to be evaluated, not just the level of expense.

Rob English