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Leadership Huntington seeks to be a source of quality information on local issues, and a bridge between regional thinking and local implementation -- Among these efforts is work with the Long Island Regional Planning Council to disseminate and consider locally the consensus-based plan they've offered to keep Long Island's schools financially sound and increasingly equitable, while both maintaining our region's standard of academic excellence and addressing the key challenge of increasingly crippling property taxes. They did this in cooperation with a broadly based working group of expertise and key stakeholders.

The consensus-based "Plan of Action" for Educational Achievement and Cost Containment for K-12 Schools released by the Long Island Regional Planning Council in collaboration with the Education Working Group is summarized below. A more detailed summary, in the form of a press packet that includes an overview of the process, some detail of the recommendations, and a list of working group members is attached.

We also refer interested readers to this June 2011 resource assembled by the Nassau and Eastern Suffolk BOCES organizations, that provides a lot of the raw data supporting these recommendations:

http://www.lirpc.org/ADFiles%5CBOCES_Working%20Together%20for%20Sustainability.pdf

A great deal more about this and the LIRPC's full LI2035 Plan is available on their website: www.lirpc.org

PREMISES REGARDING LONG ISLAND'S K-12 PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM
- Overall Good Quality Education of some ot State's Highest Performing Schools
- Some of Persistently Low Achieving Schools
- High Cost of Education Resulting in Some of the Highest Property Taxes in the Nation
- High Taxes Inhibit Job Retention and Creation
- Quality and Affordable Public Education Critical to Island's Sustainability
- Plan Aims to Increase Academic Performance and Education Opportunities for All, while Containing Costs by Building on Regional Resources (e.g. BOCES)

PROPOSED ACTIONS
1. Address Inequitities in Educational Opportunities
2. Rescission of Unfunded Mandates
3. Utilize Technology to More Effectively Deliver Teaching Services
4. Restructure High Schools to Optimize the Full Educational Experience
5. Incentivize Consolidation of School Districts
6. Reduce the Costs of the Public Retirement System
7. Pursue Alternatives fo the State Health Insurance Program
8. Reform the State's Educational Funding Formula
9. Assess Regionalized Collective Bargaining for School Employees
10. More Effectively Utilize School Facilities and Programs to Address Community Needs
11. Support Creation of Workforce Housing
12. Monitor, Assess and Modify, as Necessary, Plan Recommendations to Achieve Desired Results