Superintendent: Long Beach Schools May Open Next Tuesday

Long Beach Public Schools will reopen no earlier than next week, more than two weeks after Hurricane Sandy slammed Long Beach, according to Superintendent Dr. David Weiss.

After a nearly two-hour meeting with the Board of Education at Lindell School Tuesday evening, Weiss said the district will try to open some schools on Nov. 13, after school officials had wanted to try a partial reopening on Wednesday, a plan that they rethought due a nor’easter that is expected to hit Long Island the next two days.

“We were trying really hard to open school tomorrow on a partial basis; with the impending weather it makes absolutely no sense for us to try that,” Weiss told Patch on Tuesday.

He said that while not all of the schools buildings are fully prepared to reopen yet, the district expects to have three sites functioning on Nov. 13. Those buildings are Lindell, East School and Long Beach High School. “We expect to have them ready,” Weiss said. “I can’t tell you that we will.”  

Meanwhile, the district still has considerable logistics to work out in order to transport students to schools, since many have been displaced with their families to areas throughout Nassau County after the hurricane knocked out electric, water, sewage, Internet and phone services in the city Oct. 29.

“We’ll be transporting kids from around the county back to the district,” Weiss said. “That location and identification process is going on right now.”

On Tuesday, district buses picked up hundreds of displaced teachers and other staff members at train stations in Oceanside and Freeport and transported them to Lindell School for a staff meeting Tuesday morning. Approximately 65 percent of district staff lives in Long Beach, Weiss said.  

“We’re going to expand well beyond that as we identify where kids are,” he explained. “...”What’s different about Long Beach from the rest of the county is that people may have lost electricity, but we’ve lost our people. And most of the people who stayed in Long Beach during the storm lost their cars.”

The superintendent said that daily updates will be posted on the district website by 6 p.m. each day, as well as possible mid-day updates.

The latest update reads: “At this time, we understand that there are many questions, including many logistical ones.  We will be providing detailed answers to these questions on the lbeach.org website. Please continue to check for continued updates. On Friday, November 9th, the Long Beach staff will be meeting at the Lindell School from 9am to 12 pm to plan for the arrival of our children on Tuesday.”

Since Long Beach is without Internet access, parents and students should try to find a “web buddy’— a person who has access to the web, since problems with communication and transportation are the two greatest hurdles the district presently faces, Weiss said.

Moreover, the four Long Beach sports teams that were scheduled to participate in the playoffs this weekend will play, the superintendent said. The varsity football team that is scheduled to play at Carey on Saturday, however, lost their equipment in the storm. But Weiss said the district would borrow equipment from other school districts.

“But when we take donations, it’s for all out teams, not just one team,” he said.

* Joley Welkowitz contributed to this story.