In last week's Herald, a member of the community wrote a letter about the Plainview-Old Bethpage Board of Education's stance on Old Plainview. The letter contained several inaccuracies and raised several concerns that we would like to address.

First, the budget reductions made last year did not decrease the number of students participating in Project Challenge. We are servicing the same number of students with one less teacher. Second, the board of education has a class-size policy that caps classes in grades K-2 at 25 students, and classes in grades 3-12 at 30 students. The author of the letter expressed concern that last year one of our collaborative classes at the Kindergarten Center had 23 students. Although that number may seem high to her, it is well within our class size policy. For the past seven years, the board of education has worked to keep class sizes lower than the caps, and we have succeeded.

Third, in speaking of school district programs and services, should the Old Plainview proposal be approved by the Town of Oyster Bay, the author states that "the unspoken message seems to be that it will just be harder to qualify for these additional benefits since there will be additional children striving for these limited spots." This is not the case. If additional students are generated by the development of Old Plainview, the district is committed to ensuring that all children who qualify for our programs and services will continue to receive them. If the new students generated by the development of the Old Plainview property cause us to exceed our class size or program size caps, the district will create new sections to accommodate these students, as we have done in the past.

Finally, the author states that "the board of ed is trying to make nice to Mr. Wang and Mr. Rechler in hopes of receiving a good deal." Once again, this is absolutely false. The board of education is not seeking any kind of a deal. We hired an external expert to tell us how much it will cost to build new spaces and renovate existing spaces to handle the new students generated by this development. The amount is $6.4 million. That's the number, period. There is no negotiation and no deal. If the developer gives the district these funds, then we can accommodate the new students without having our community's residents pay one additional cent in taxes. If the developer does not, then the board of education must oppose this project because the community's taxpayers will be harmed.

The Plainview-Old Bethpage Board of Education