Letters

Your editorial “Time to Talk” [May 12] gets it exactly right — it is a conversation long past due, concerning school consolidation.

The need for multiple superintendents for all these schools with such small student bodies has never been necessary and is a profligate waste of taxpayers’ dollars, with zero benefit to the schools they are meant to administer and the communities they serve. There is simply no reason why these schools cannot be united under one supervisor with a shared administrative staff and obtain the same results at a greatly reduced cost.

As you well point out, Wainscott is a classic example of a “fiefdom,” with unwarranted, superfluous spending for its 14-pupil student body. Wainscott has been bitterly opposed to proposed affordable housing in the district to prevent any intrusion within their exclusive demesne.

My high school graduating class was 729 students, with a student body of roughly 2,100. There was only one superintendent for the entire school district, of which there were four other similarly sized high schools plus the feeder middle schools, also in the same school district.

The schools of Montauk, Amagansett, Springs, East Hampton, Sag Harbor and Wainscott should be supervised by a single superintendent with shared administrative staffing for common procurements and other repetitive considerations.

John Porta

Westhampton