Superintendent of the Mineola School District Dr. Larry Licopoli delivered his annual state-of-the-district address Thursday night and then he read his resignation letter. Dr. Licopoli resigned effective Dec. 31, 2008 for the purposes of retirement. The superintendent planned on retiring at the end of his contract, which is due to expire June 30, 2009. However, he said due to a health issue, he plans on retiring at the end of 2008.

The Mineola School District Board of Education will have to begin a superintendent search at a time when the district may be about to undergo major changes. The district is currently in the midst of a grade configuration study, which the superintendent mentioned in his state-of-the-district address.

"As the board evaluates the findings from the grade configuration study, including the input from the staff and community, they will be facing a most difficult decision impacting the delivery of our education program. The issues, questions and benefits of closing schools and realigning our grades, coupled with the anticipated cost efficiencies, will shape all future planning in our schools - programmatically and financially," said Dr. Licopoli.

With the possibility of a school closing and the grades being reconfigured, the school board will soon be in the midst of a superintendent search. One possibility is to promote deputy superintendent Michael Nagler to the position.

School Board President John McGrath said that, for now, the grade configuration study and the proposed 2008-09 budget will be priorities and then after the budget vote, the board will move forward with its superintendent search. "The search for superintendent, although it will be considered by the board, probably won't go full steam until after some decisions have been made on grade configuration and after the annual budget vote. We have a lot of work to do with respect to grade configuration and the budget vote, which is why it's unfortunate he's [Dr. Licopoli] leaving now, as opposed to when we anticipated," said McGrath.

The school board president wished Dr. Licopoli well with his health. "I regret his early request for retirement. He's had many great accomplishments in the time he's been superintendent and I wish him all the best in terms of his health. I look forward to him continuing as superintendent until he retires," said McGrath.

Also, in his state-of-the-district address, Dr. Licopoli addressed state assessments, which are a barometer that measures student achievement. The Mineola School District has gotten a reputation among some for not achieving comparable results on the state assessments to other area schools that spend less money per pupil than Mineola. Dr. Licopoli warned against such comparisons. "As a county and state, we have to stop misusing high stake state assessments as school quality rating systems. Real quality is a function of improvement among the same students over time. It is wrong to compare Mineola and districts like us to high-wealth suburban districts for all of the obvious reasons. Nevertheless, it does not mean that our expectations and aspirations for student achievement are anything less," he said.

Among some of the recommendations Dr. Licopoli made to the board of education were:

• Investigate the ideas of retaining the targeted excessed physical education teaching position for the purpose of meeting state physical education requirements and realigning the elementary schedule so that elementary teachers and librarians would work together during library time with the goal of clustering students for more advanced content coursework.

• Add the .6 full-time equivalent science position for the purpose of building an Intel/Westinghouse research program.

• Build a five-year plan for adding SMARTBoards to each of the classes.

• Develop a formula for determining staffing allocations per pupil, insuring the equitable distribution based on students' needs. Guidelines for determining staff needs are as follows for pre-kindergarten through fifth grades for the 2008-2009 school year:

Pre-Kindergarten - one-half teacher for each 20 pupils in pre-kindergarten, rounded to the nearest half. For example, 97 pupils would warrant three teachers.

Kindergarten to Second Grade - One teacher per 22 pupils, rounded to the nearest whole number. For example, 97 pupils would warrant four teachers.

Third and Fourth Grades - One teacher for every 24 pupils, rounded to the nearest whole number. For example, 97 pupils would warrant four teachers; 160 pupils would warrant seven teachers.

Grades five and six - One teacher for every 26 pupils, rounded to the nearest whole number. For example, 97 teachers would warrant four teachers and 160 pupils would warrant six teachers.

There will be a focus group held on the grade configuration study on Wednesday, March 5. While there were virtually no details provided at the last focus group held at Mineola High School during which community input was encouraged, on March 5, there is expected to be greater details and scenarios of how the school district may configure its grades. In Dr. Licopoli's recommendations to the board of education in his state-of-the-district report, he states that the 2009-2010 school year would be the target year for the implementation of the changes on grade configuration the board of education ultimately decides on, with the 2008-2009 school year targeted for transition.