Protecting East Northport-Northport’s Future Schoo

Dear Community of Northport-East Northport,

My name is Teresa (Prie) Ford. I have lived in Northport for 55 years and like all of us love our community. I need your help. I am trying to raise start-up money for an East Northport Civic Association that is in the very beginning stages. The first goal of the Civic will be to try to STOP any referendum process for sale of schools. It would also be a gateway to inform the entire Northport- East Northport Community of what is transpiring in the school district with regard to the leasing /selling of schools and addressing other immediate needs regarding saving the properties through mass mailings and other outreach. The East Northport Civic will establish a mission with goals of importance to the community residents.

Many are not on e-mail or social media. The East Northport Civic needs money for mass mailings to the community, a website, advertising and signage etc. If the Civic Association at any time feels the need to obtain legal counsel to protect the interests of the community, the Civic could be the vehicle to help pay for legal representation.

The Northport-East Northport Board of Education is currently on a “pause” in the process of selling the schools for dense development. They will be revisiting the topic in June when the contract with Newmark (Commercial Realtors) expires. As an aside, Newmark only recently starting advertising the buildings for lease on their website on February 29, 2024 (almost a year later after a community member called to ask why they weren’t advertised to public on their we). If the district DID want to lease the buildings they would NOT have hired a commercial realtor. They would have initially tried to find lessees on their own. Keep in mind a commercial realtor would benefit more from a sale.

Many think it is still on the BOE Agenda to sell the schools based on comments from certain Trustees at recent meetings and the cover page BOE Agendas.

Also, we currently have Matinecock Housing going up on Elwood that could potentially bring at least 100 or more students to the district. Consequently, the idea of selling the schools doesn’t make sense with an undetermined amount of increased students and that is why the community is upset.

Please share this Go Fund Me with anyone you know that would like to preserve these school properties for the incoming children of the district and future generations. Any financial reasons for selling the schools has been debunked and discussed in depth at recent BOE meetings. Yet the sale talk continues. You will not be saving money on school taxes if the properties are sold. The fact of the matter is these two plots of land are wanted desperately by the developers. The land is a primary focus and wanted badly. The properties are assets to the community and only increase in value over time. Ideally it would be great to lease if we did not have to pay a realtor fee over the course of the lease.

In conclusion, the argument is if they build the dense development – where are the children going to go to school? We need to keep our little bit of valuable green space that is left. All money raised will have every penny accounted for and used for an evolving Civic Association (more info to follow)

Thank you so much for your interest in saving ALL our school properties. You don’t have to be a resident to donate. The goal is to protect all the schools from sale not just Dickinson Avenue and Bellerose Ave. More pictures and information to follow.