TWF 364: Upcoming Board Of Elections & Budget Vote - Tuesday, May 19th, 2026

Hello, friends,

It's been a while, hasn't it?  I hope you're all doing well.  I don't have particularly much to say today, especially as you've already read the title of this post.

There is a School Board and School Budget vote taking place on Tuesday, May 19th, 2026.  This is, in many ways, an ordinary election:  There are seats up for re-election and there is a school budget to attend to.

This is your reminder that The Weekly Freeporter does not endorse candidates exclusively local to Freeport, seeing as I no longer live there.

With that said, we have reported on some of the controversies taking place in the district.  Whatever you think of what's taking place, the metaphorical temperature is already higher than normal.

This is also an exceptional election because, unlike ordinary elections where two board seats are available, there are three school board seats up for election this year.  This would constitute a majority of the school board being up for grabs, so it is especially important that you vote if you have a stake in how things proceed.  Whether you want to lock in the current course or change direction in a significant way, with a majority up for election you can guarantee a path forward of your choice if you vote and organize others to get out and vote for you.

Again, we do not endorse Freeport-exclusive candidates here, but we do endorse voting itself, and we do endorse researching before you do so.  Please do your own research into all of the candidates, and please vote for who you believe will do the best job for Freeport's future.

Also, don't forget to vote your opinion on the budget.  That's very important.

I may not live in Freeport anymore, but I do care how my old friends are doing, and I want my hometown to succeed - whatever its definition of success might be.

Jesse Pohlman is a former Freeporter and former Freeport High School Employee who presently resides in Mineola, but still has friends he cares about in his hometown.  His website can be found here, he has a new book coming out which you can pre-order on Amazon Kindle here, and he'll continue providing occasional election reminders, weather alerts, and other reporting as long as people are reading!

TWF 359: An Endorsement Of Seth Koslow For Nassau County Executive

Greetings, friends,

I promised you, dear readers, that I wouldn’t intervene in politics which I no longer have anything to do with.  That’s why I’ve stayed out of a lot of Freeport shenanigans lately.  But I still live in Nassau County and on Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 we’re all voting together for Nassau County Executive (among others).  You’ve already read the headline, so allow me to lay out where things stand.

I am pretty confident that I’m much further to the left than Koslow is - in fact, I’m not presently a Democrat; I’m in the Working Families Party.

Koslow is, by all accounts, quite the centrist candidate in a, “This is just what will work for Nassau County” way.  To be clear, I don’t believe in that approach, preferring to stand or fall based on the strength of one’s beliefs and ideas, but I’ve seen enough from Koslow that I feel like it’s better for him to have power than it is to sit back, do nothing, and allow current executive Bruce Blakeman to retain power.

In other words, Koslow had to sell himself to me in a very different way than he is trying to sell himself to most of Nassau, but that doesn’t mean that I’m unwilling to accept boiler-plate mediocrity accompanied by uninspired bland governance when the alternative is a Fascist.

(For two definitions of Fascism as applied to Donald Trump, specifically, and thus transitively towards his followers and lackeys like Blakeman, check this video of mine where I cover both Roger Griffin's "Palingenetic Ultranationalist" framework and Umberto Eco's "Fourteen Points" framework of the term "Fascism.")

Let’s Start With An Anti-Authoritarian Praxis.

For starters, Koslow has said (if I’m recalling Newsday’s endorsement of him correctly) that he would stop cooperation with Trump’s Getstapo, ICE, and stop allowing ICE to stash its kidnapping victims in Nassau county jails.  We know of one victim who has already died in Blakeman’s cooperation with Trump’s Gestapo, but there may be others who were kidnapped by ICE, transferred, and “disappeared” who may never be heard from again.

That alone is enough to warrant a vote for change.

Ending ICE cooperation would be a boiler-plate start; ordering Nassau County PD to arrest Trump’s masked kidnappers and terrorists when they break county law and harass or assault residents is far more to my liking, but I somehow doubt Koslow will go that far. It'd be awesome if he did, though!

Now also seems to be a good time to mention that Blakeman himself has raised a private militia accountable only to the County Executive.  I reported on it for my now-retired (because fuck Substack and it’s cozying up to Nazi writers) publication, The Progressive Cafe, and I’m sort of surprised I never published anything about it here.  But, yes, Blakeman has a personal micro-army that he can deploy in case of whatever emergency he deems fit.  That seems unnecessary and bad, and certainly not ‘small government,’ now, doesn’t it?

It’s my understanding Koslow will disband this organization, which would be a tremendous benefit to Nassau County.  It would eliminate both the risk that they go rogue and harm civilians, as well as the risk to the county of the lawsuits that would amount if they did, indeed, go insane.

But there’s more to this endorsement than just an authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian dissection, here.

Koslow Seems To Be A Rational Human Being.  Blakeman isn’t.

I was unable to attend the Nassau Pride Coalition’s ‘Meet The Candidates’ event, but it’s my understanding Seth Koslow was there and - surprise! - Bruce Blakeman wasn’t.  Gee, I wonder why a transphobe like Blakeman would shun a Pride-oriented political event?

That means that Koslow is, at the very least, the closest thing to an Ally that we in the Queer community have.  That’s a huge step.  I don’t know what he said or if he’s really good enough to earn my support based on that alone, but I also didn’t hear any bullshit like, “He came but he said insulting stuff.”  So based on the fact that I didn’t hear that he did a bad job, I have to assume he was at least passable to people who are more on-the-ground than me.

I also seem to remember him having staff at Pride On The Mile this year, telling me that at the very least he’s been consistently reaching out to us.

But besides his pro-LGBTQIA+ stance on stuff?

Well, I did hear a clip of a debate where he talked about a plan for increasing affordable housing in Nassau County.  He wants to assess the County’s various buildings that it owns but isn’t using, see what it really needs, and then sell some of those assets off to be developed into housing.  Is this plan revolutionary?  No, not really.  Will it be a tremendous help?  Not unless Nassau is holding a LOT of unnecessary land.  But will it be better than Blakeman’s answer, which was that he doesn’t want to add affordable housing at all and wants housing costs to go up, actually?

Yes.

Koslow is also at least tangentially involved in an ongoing chaotic situation with the Freeport School Board.  He and ex-member (now County Legislator) Debra Mule gave Shuron Jackson and Maria Jordan-Awalom citations regarding their dedication to the school board. Considering that the school board situation is absolute madness, too, it's worth noting that him giving them these citations could be interpreted as a support of a political faction that's opposed to the absolutely batshit things I've heard coming out of the schools, lately.

Speaking of: Of that situation, the only thing I feel like I have room to say anything about is that I know Patricia Langan has been leading the Freeport Teachers’ Association. I'm an ex-TA in Freeport who worked with her and I'm pretty sure I knew her even as far back as being a student. I’ve always known Langan to be a respectable and truthful person.  If she says there’s a problem, I’d suggest you believe her.

Remember the NUMC scandal?   Where Bruce Blakeman’s hand-picked lackey fucked up our county’s healthcare safety net?  I can’t be sure, but I somehow doubt that Seth Koslow would allow something so stupid to happen.  I somehow suspect he would be base-line competent enough to manage NUMC, to find some way to improve it even.

Or, at the very least, he would find someone to run it who could.

I’m Unhappy, But Overall, Koslow’s Better Than Sitting Out

There are some elections where there’s just no upside.  I call these “Republican Versus Republican-Lite” votes.  I live in District 3 where our “Democrat” is a lying Republican-lite coward named Tom Suozzi who was forced back on us after he left us in the dust for a vanity governorship run without so much as a primary to decide if we should take him back.  Thanks for nothing, Jay Jacobs!   I would never vote for him again.  I hope he is primaried.  I’d rather just have a Republican who I know will sell me out instead of a “Democrat” who lies to me and sells me out - as he did when he pledged to sponsor Medicare For All and never followed through on his promise.  Sellout Suozzi.

Laura Gillen in District 4 (that’s Freeport, IIRC) is shaping up to be the same kind of failure, and I sincerely hope someone primaries her, as well.  Maybe one of you reading this will take up that challenge!

I don’t know enough about Koslow to know if he’s going to be a Republican-Lite.  I don’t know if he’s going to pretend we live in the 1990’s and that the parties aren’t so far apart.  It’s 2025.  One has fully conceded to and embraced Fascism while the other is oh-so-scared to do much about it - or, at least, its leadership is.

When I don’t know something about a politician, my first tip is what they have on their websites.

A lot of the talk on his website is just laughable to me.  He’s going to lower taxes?  At a time when the Federal government is going into austerity and the economy is on the verge of collapse?  Okay, so then what money is he going to use to take care of the indigent given that SNAP is about to be left unfunded? In fact, I literally just got today's mail confirming that my tax credit for my health insurance is being taken away (Thanks, "Big Beautiful Bill!"). Lowering taxes means less resources for NUMC and other hospitals in the area.

Koslow wants to erase wasteful spending?  That’s a Republican talking point, bud, and I know what they mean when they say “wasteful spending.”  They mean starving “wasteful” people to death and denying them healthcare - literally "Big Beautiful Bill Language."  Why are you trying to reclaim that, man?

On his priorities page, he dedicates three - count ‘em, three! - whole sentences to disabled Nassau County residents and a whopping two sentences to protecting people against discrimination.  That’s genuinely pathetic.  It’s actually kind of insulting to read that and go, “He couldn’t even mention things like making sure police aren’t abusing Black-And-Brown people” or “Not a word about the LGBTQIA+ community.”  Two.  Sentences.

Again:  It’s pathetic, really.

It’s entirely possible that Koslow wins, does absolutely nothing for minority groups, and goes out next election exactly the same way Laura Curran went out for not standing up for what she might have (?) believed in and spending more time on Fox News than actually pushing anything she’s supposed to stand for as a Democrat.  It’s entirely possible he’s Republican-Lite.

But, then again, I left the Democratic party because New York State’s party as an organization doesn’t stand for much of anything, exceptions like AOC aside.  That’s why so many of them lose easily-winnable races. And this might be one of them where strong ideals get people motivated to go out and vote where boiler-plate centrist language fails to.

Under ordinary times, in my perfect world, I might not be endorsing Koslow, who I really hope reads this and proves me wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong. If you're reading this? Prove. Me. Wrong. I want to be apologizing to you for ever doubting you. Maybe he'll be the scary hyper-leftist that's in keeping with Zohran Mamdani as so many of the bullshit attack ad flyers we get daily paint him as.

Probably not.

The fact remains, however, that all of this contrasts with our present state of insanity.  All of this is against a backdrop against Trump and Blakeman’s authoritarian madness.  Koslow isn’t one vote out of many that can be made up for elsewhere.  Koslow is running for an executive position where he’d be overseeing some of the most important things in this difficult time.

A friend of mine once appealed to Koslow for help and described him - this is my interpretation of my friend's story - to be the kind of Legislator who says “There should be a law about that!” but forgets that he could write one - or thinks it’d be too hard.  I don’t know, I’m not that friend. Maybe he'll have something to say about it in the comments.

As Executive, Koslow will need to do better than he did for my friend.  He will need to do better than his website promises, because his website reads like an empty suit.  He will need to do better than Jay Jacobs and the Nassau & New York Democrats ever promise, because those two are terrified of anything that might upset their wealthy donors.

Can he do it?  I don’t honestly know. I hope he can! But I harbor doubts.

Nonetheless, voting for Koslow is better than sitting out and letting Blakeman continue to run the county into the ground.  It’s better than sitting out and letting Blakeman continue to be a bigot towards Trans people.  It’s better than letting Blakeman have a private militia.  It’s better than letting Blakeman work with ICE.

I endorse Seth Koslow for Nassau County Executive.

(Yes, you may consider this a proxy-endorsement for the entire Democratic ticket) (ALSO: Don't forget to turn your ballot over to vote on any propositions that might exist!)

Image courtesy of Seth Koslow's website.

TWF 346: Public Hearing On Proposed Charter School: Thursday, August 22, 2024, 6:00 PM EST. Plus, my thoughts on the idea.

 

[EDIT:  I received some additional documentation, reported on below]

Hello, friends!

It's certainly been a while.  I was thrilled to get a chance to visit Freeport's second-annual Pride On The Mile event back in June, but I wasn't physically well enough to put an article about it together.  I just wanted to start with that belated shoutout because, well, they deserve it!

On to the star of today's article:  Maven Charter Academy School is interested in opening, well, a Charter School in Freeport, and I want to discuss that a little bit.

Now, before I say anything else:  I am biased on this issue.  I spent eight years working in public education.  Nearly five of them were spent as a Teaching Assistant at Freeport High School.  I am very big into public education, very confident in Freeport's academic strengths, and based on my experience in education, I am very hesitant to think that a charter school is going to do the best job it can with the resources its given.

With that out of the way, I want to encourage you to undertake all the possible research you can if this issue at all attracts your attention, because it is a community-redefining one.

For starters, here's a Freeport Public Schools public hearing flyer for you to peruse.  I'll have more to say after you look at it.

You don't necessarily have to have something to say to go to a public hearing, by the way.  You aren't required to speak.  You can go and listen.  Remember a decade and change ago, when myself and my sometimes co-conspirator Jason Bass would go to the Village of Freeport Board of Trustees meetings and take notes, then report back?

You can do this for yourself, or report it for others through your own publication, Facebook group, whatever.  Freeport School District meetings are (or at least used to be) usually easy to get in and out of, usually have plenty of seating, and are generally polite affairs.

I was also able to get a more detailed briefing for the meeting, along with some initial information on the School District website:

This letter stresses that the State University of New York's Charter Schools Institute, and the State Education Department itself, are deeply involved.  This document goes so far as to imply, if not directly state, that the final decision will be made by the SUNY Board of Trustees, and so how much actual say the Freeport Public Schools has over this issue is...Questionable?

I legitimately don't know.

Now, On To Maven.

One of the first things any parent considering where to send their school - or any citizen trying to evaluate a school - should do is research their website.

Maven does have a website laying out some of their plan, which is nice.  And, I'll be up-front about fairness:  They don't exactly have a school running yet, so I don't expect there to be too much information.  But let's see what they've got.

 - They say they provide Youtube content, but I can't find any that's clearly related to them.

 - Their "About" page is two paragraphs long with an invitation to reach out to find out more.

 - Their "Academics" page is one paragraph long with a few Eduspeak buzz-words and little concrete information.  There is a "Learn More" button on this page that does nothing so far as I can tell.

Of greater interest:  Their "Student Life" page has some actual information, if you know how to translate it out of Eduspeak.  Their thoughts about "Social Emotional Learning" are, though not detailed, at least the boiler-plate for what I'd expect a good school to be.  They talk about restorative justice as a cornerstone of discipline, which is a practice I'm familiar with and happen to think works well about 85% of the time.

Then it starts getting weird.

Maven Might Be Religious.

The commentary about "Emotional, Moral, and Ethical" development raises "spirituality," which I find incredibly dangerous.  Spirituality tied to moral and ethical growth?  Is this a religious school?

Well, I went looking around their site and didn't see much, so I hopped on their Twitter account and found, well...

And it gets...Less pleasant.

When trying to research who exactly was behind this project (because their website lacks details), I discovered this Long Island Herald article.

Maven's ringleader seems to be Craig Mercado, a former principal of - among other things - a religious school, St. Ephrem Catholic Academy.  All the talk about "classical education" I see on their website, plus those references to spirituality, plus those posts about doing information blitzes outside of churches and also the concerns about faith-based charters coming?

Add that to a religious educational background and you get me deeply suspicious that this would be a religious charter school.

I know Maven goes to great length to try to claim they don't take money from public schools, but that's obtuse at best.  "Charter school students are removed from public school enrollment, and the per-pupil funding for those students is then directed to the charter school. The community is paying the same cost for the child's education, and the local public school continues to be funded for every child it educates."

Not only is that still tax dollars going to what I can only assume, at this point, is a religious institution, but the idea that the Charter School is somehow going to pay for its own building and infrastructure, it's own material resources, and its own teachers - all without any taxpayer dollars - and turn around to make a profit based solely on average per-student expenditure?

Well, here's one way that Maven's other mastermind, Dr. Patrick Fogarty talks about achieving this pipe dream in his Long Island Herald article:  Using non-union labor.

In other words:  The plan is to provide teachers less job protection - and probably lower wages, since unions typically raise wages.  This means that the students get inferior teachers who are constantly fearful that their job could screw them over at any moment.  After all, that's what "lower overhead as far as teachers we hire" must mean, because how could you spend more money on a teacher that's got lower overhead?

The Bottom Line - It's A Bad Idea.

The goal of a charter school isn't student outcomes.  It's to turn a profit.

Supporters might argue, "If the school doesn't produce good outcomes, enrollment will fall off and it will fail!"  And, yes, it might.  But school results aren't super hard to fake, especially at the lower grade levels that Maven seems to be targeting.  There are some state-wide tests, of course, but a lot of that could be resolved simply by teaching students how to take the test, and not actually teaching them what they should be learning at those grade levels.

I know I'm not an elementary specialist, but I've worked in elementary classrooms.  It's not easy.  It's definitely not something you're going to want to do without a union to protect you if you rub your principal the wrong way.  You're not gonna wanna put as much effort in when you find out that you don't have the same kinds of retirement, health care, and compensation packages that your union teacher at the public school has.  I know because I've talked to Charter school teachers who have felt this way.

Never mind that this school seems awfully shady when it comes to whether or not its a religious institution, talking about "spirituality" and the unleashing of faith-based charter schools, but not clearly delineating a particular faith, and also not clearly delineating that it is non-faith-based.

The truth is, there's not enough information available about what these guys want to do:  And if you're heading into public comment to try to get public school money to pay for your private profits?  And you don't have enough information for curious readers to decide?  When you aren't clear if you'd just be accepting Freeport students, or if you'd also accept from nearby communities?  When you don't even seem to have a shortlist of locations to actually build your school in a Village that doesn't exactly have the most prime real estate available?

I would be strongly against this.

-----ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CAME IN-----

I managed to get hold of a bunch of documentation regarding this school.  I found this page particularly disturbing.

"While not explicitly stated," they are aligning with Catholic school values.

This is a Catholic school in disguise.

Jesse Pohlman is a recovering teacher, sci-fi/fantasy author, and the publisher of The Weekly Freeporter, which is no longer Weekly nor a Freeporter's perspective, but rather an occasional former Freeporter's take on topics that generally go broader than just the Village.

TWF 326 - A Dig Into Claims Of Increased School Violence.

Hello, friends!

Throughout the course of this years' contest for School Board, I've seen numerous parents, residents, and taxpayers express concern about the safety conditions at the Freeport School District degenerating. That's a weird sentence, but I don't know how else to really put it: There's this pervasive idea that the schools are unsafe as they're operated; or, at least significantly less safe than they were.

I mean, hey!  Didn't you hear about that one recent, really bad fight?  Isn't that something to be worried about?

This article has changed significantly in its second draft thanks to information from village insiders and also just the course of revisions.  Much of it (especially the data dive) will be in its original form, because that was the original point of the article - Background, data-dive, quick thoughts, done.

The more research I did, the more complicated the story got, and the more I had to say about it; so I hope you'll join me for a dive into data, statistics, numbers, and - ultimately - a broader perspective to take on some changes that need to take place to fix what looks like a very real, but intangible problem.

If you want a TL;DR version of this, just scroll down to the last few paragraphs, but suffice to say that the data does not tell a complete picture, the research is sometimes contradictory, and the pursuit of information has been hampered with farce.  I've broken the article down to chapters, with chapter 3 being my conclusions and, as I always endeavor to provide, recommendations on what to do, next.

On The Record About School Safety

Obviously, it goes without saying that student safety is paramount.  As an educator for about eight years, I've always put student safety first.  I've had to test that commitment to their safety bodily (took just a grazing blow, no biggie).

Chapter One:  Sourcing and data.

Getting A Background

I was looking for some exact quotes to pull from the candidates, because the first thing I know about journalism is that it's essential to get people at their word. So imagine my surprise when I ran into a little problem with trying to track down some relevant Facebook groups:

I found it weird that I couldn't see the Facebook group for Butler and Jackson's campaign, when I had been able to do so for my previous article on the election (TWF 324).  So, naturally, I asked if other people could still see it, and their answer was "very clearly, yes." I saw so, myself, on another person's Facebook account, that the group and its posts still existed.

So, that almost certainly meant I was blocked from their Facebook group for asking this very question.

Since it's now the day after this issue, it's only fair to note that it appears I have since been un-blocked, because the group is visible again, but only after public complaint.  I am not the only person who has experienced an inability to see their group; there's more than one person who has reported being being blocked from some groups or pages.

For what it's worth, I've been assured that I never was blocked, but I can't think of any explanation as to why others could see what I couldn't.

This feels like the early days of getting into stupid Facebook arguments as far back as 2010.  Ahh, the old days of Mayor Hardwick trying to influence the School Board.  (Mayor Kennedy has endorsed the Jackson/Butler ticket)  The reason I mention it is because, again, this is a dive into my research practices as much as it is an analysis of background, and when I find something - shall we say - interesting in the research, I always report it.

It's hard to come up with a background record when part of it is obscured, even temporarily.

Moving on:  I was looking for quotes.  Let's see what I find.

What's Readily Available

I do have a very brief, but useful bit of a statement-on-safety from each of the four candidates, courtesy of the Long Island Herald:

Most of this is in the mold of boiler-plate obligations that political leaders have to say.  I get it!  Maria Jordan-Awalom provides a broader context to the problem of a nation-wide rise in school violence, based on her experience with police councils.  This would lend some significant credence to the idea that, yes, there might be an ongoing spike!  We will circle back around to this later.

But the thing I noticed that was particularly unusual was Mr. Ben Jackson's (I almost wrote "Mr. Jackson," but there are two candidates with that last name running, so I have to check myself) interest in increasing the amount of contact between the schools and the police department.  It's couched in the Adopt-A-Cop program, which is certainly an interesting idea!

But, here, I have to think about my own experience in education.

I was an educator for about eight years, and five of them were spent in Freeport.  When I later worked for NYC DOE, we frequently had contact with school-based police officers.  The reception was definitely mixed; I'm sure I got a mostly-positive reception as I was a teacher (I even wore "work clothes!"), but I'm pretty sure the kids didn't share those feelings.  Many of them told me they felt like they were labeled "bad kids" and otherwise stigmatized by things like having police in the school and having metal detectors and whatnot.

In other words, I know it did significant mental harm to them.

Now, I know from first-hand experience that there are days Freeport High breaks out the metal detector wands.  Those days *suck,* by the way, but I get it.  They happen!  There's a known threat, or maybe it's just a random day once in a while to check things.  Totally understandable.

But I've also had to be the guy who doesn't just de-escalate students, but de-escalates cops who are thinking of detaining his students instead of just talking through a problem.  That was certainly an unpleasant day, and my fear is that adding police into the schools will create those type of problems when previously they didn't exist.

Could police be further integrated into the schools in an appropriate manner?  Maybe!  It's just very hard to say what will cross the fine line between, "We have a guest in the school today," and, "One more reminder I live my daily school life under surveillance by authorities who don't trust me to be free."  And I haven't seen a stated plan-of-action anywhere, so my gut says, "Not without a clear plan, no."

(I am obliged to note, based on this invocation, that the Freeport Police Benevolent Association has endorsed Mr. Ben Jackson, as well as his running mate Mr. Butler.)

So there's your background - and some of it's mine, when it comes to talking about schools.

Now, let's look at some data starting with 2020-2021

This is mostly stream-of-consciousness, and a look into my research procedure as much as it is into data.

Thanks to a lead from one Scott McInnes (I tip my hat), I've been able to find data on what the school has reported to the state. The website to do this can be found from the NYS Department of Education, whereby first you have to pick a year. Then you download one of two spreadsheets - The choices are “NYC” or “not NYC,” so that's a lot of data to parse.

Thankfully, (Editorial Note:  SOME OF) the spreadsheets are built with filters included.

I also have to note:  2020-2021 was the Pandemic's height. (Case numbers are climbing back up, by the way) Most kids weren't in school for most of the year.  Much of the in-class time involved hybrid learning.  I know - I was working in an elementary school for part of it.

Here's what you get when you look at Freeport for 2020-2021.  It's not 21-22, but that year (which appears to be the entire point of this question!) isn't over.  It'll require two separate images to put all the spreadsheet data out:

So, there you have the 2020-2021 data.  Anyway, what we've got here starts with one - to be clear, this is bad - incidence of physical assault.  I don't know how far a common fight has to get in order to be classified as "physical assault."  It took place at Atkinson, if that's any help.

Moving on in a similar vein:  The next thing that jumps out at me is that we've got a (very hard to parse) bit of data indicating that cyberbullying is a problem.  I don't think that's anything particularly new, but there's also less than ten incidents of it.  Now, yes, that needs to be worked on, but that's about one incident a month.

Then, on to the possession situation:  3 in Dodd, 3 in FHS.  Okay.  Kids shouldn't be doing drugs, should not selling them; we get that.  We'd like those numbers to be better, but, also, as much as kids shouldn't do something, I'm not stupid enough to pretend they don't.  At this point in my analysis, I can only note that number and get ready to look back to previous years for a trend.

There were also four incidents of weapons being brought to school.  Two of these incidents happened in Atkinson, by the way, which I only stress because I've TA'd in an elementary setting and...Just, how does an elementary kid try sneaking a weapon in without their parents finding out?  I guess it's pretty easy, it seems to happen all the time, but, wow.

Looking Back A Few Years Further.

Lemme just pull up the 2019-2020 data...

Yikes!  Okay, so what you're telling me is it ISN'T nearly as accessible as the previous document.  Now, then, here we are, Freeport, in between Roosevelt and Baldwin in this not-alphabetical list.

And here is the data!

I'm going to be honest:  TWF is a free publication, I don't charge for it, so I don't have money to pay a data analyst to break this down.  You've only got me, and your own eyes if you want to take your own look.  The highlighted column is for possession of weapons, so clearly that was more of a problem in 2019-2020 than 2020-2021.  Which only makes sense.

My eye also caught the number 6 and got concerned, but when I scrolled up it didn't even tell me what the column was, so...I'm at a loss, but 6 is bad.

Maybe 2018-2019 will be more parseable?

Good news:  It is.  This is how a spreadsheet should look for accessibility.

Bad news:  Just a first glance reveals some alarms.

And the second glance puts us into the double-digits:

I don't need to tell you that those numbers look worse.

They look worse.

How about 2017-2018?  Garbled mess again:

I wonder if the data scientists who compile these reports finish them up in alternating years?  Every other year the data makes sense and is well presented; every other year, it's virtually useless.

So we go between Roosevelt and Baldwin again...

Without much by way of context, these numbers seem to be less numerous than 18-19.  Of course, those are kind of random data points.

So What Does The Data Show?

First: Most obviously, the 2020-2021 data is less than helpful as a baseline because of the Pandemic closures and hybrid learning modalities.

Second:  Any numbers mean someone's had a really bad day, right?  Whether it's possession of narcotics or something far worse, every incident means something broke down along the way.  But what matters is how we react to it.

Third:  This data isn't the complete picture.

What do I mean?

Chapter Two:  Data can be incomplete, and is only ever part of the puzzle.

Two Rabbits.

Here's where we take the broader context into consideration.  I've got two rabbits and can only chase one at a time, but I'm about to cover both Jordan-Awalom's point about a nationwide increase in violence, and then I'm going to cover what's 'being said,' what I believe and know to be accurate about some stuff, and then finally offer a solution to at least one of the problems this data has raised.

First, to the idea of a nation-wide violence spike.  Well, in November 2021, the publication Education Week put out an article detailing that there had been an increase in school violence.  It gets a bit weirder; the same kind of thing was claimed in 2018 by USA Today (Interestingly, the 2018-2019 data looked particularly bad, earlier).  But, also, in late February 2022, NBC 6 in South Florida reported on yet another ongoing increase in violence.

Let's take this reporting for what it is:  The claim that school violence is increasing nationwide is grounded in evidence, but that evidence dates back to both before the Pandemic and after the Pandemic.  So does that mean violence is on a continually increasing scale?  Possibly!  Or, could it mean there are tiny spikes at various times?  Also possibly!

It's enough that we can't rule out that Freeport is simply seeing splash-over from a national trend.

But, let's now circle back to the claims, themselves.

What's really being said, and what does 'increase' even mean?

Well, first off, there's the general complaint, itself.  "Violence is on the rise!"  Well, I've seen those kind of claims before.  I've seen it here, and I've seen it in other schools.  It is a very easy political tool to use against incumbents, whether it's got a factual backing or not.  But some of the stories I've heard from parents have really had an impact upon me, and I also have no reason to immediately assume they are false.

What I have is knowledge that there is a substantial amount of trouble, both inside the schools and taking place outside of, but nearby.  Again, I have no reason to doubt what I've seen, regardless of where it came from.  Apropos of everything, yes, it is concerning.

What I haven't seen (yet, anyway?) is evidence that this is an actual increase in unacceptable behavior.  We know it's bad!  We're told by some it's worse than ever, and just as we lack data to prove it is, we also lack data to prove it isn't.  Certainly something needs to change, but what?

And does the problem have a Freeport-specific origin, or is it part of a nationwide trend that requires nationwide efforts to stop?

Let's make some suggestions!

Chapter Three:  Conclusions And Recommendations.

What New York State Can Do ASAP:

We need to change the way school violence numbers are reported.  Yearly simply doesn't cut it.  Schools are supposed to take some degree of guidance from parents, but parents can't provide that guidance if they don't have data on what's going on right now.

I remember during the Coronavirus pandemic (which is still ongoing; I'm talking about the earlier days), that schools were mandated to publish real-time statistics on how many kids and staff contracted CoVID.

There is no reason this cannot be done with school violence statistics, except perhaps for having to shift workloads around or hire a new staff member to take care of it.  This type of mandate must be coupled with funding to increase staff specifically for this purpose, but also for others so long as the data is compiled daily.

Ideally, this data would be published on the school's website, but it could be a state-maintained database that they link to.

That may require new laws to be passed.  Discuss with your relevant NYS Assemblyfolk/Senators.

What Freeport Can Probably (?) Do Right Now

What would be most helpful, right now, would be if Freeport could disclose what violence numbers they would be reporting to the state as of the year-to-date.  This would be imminently helpful to settling this arguable idea of a "spike in violence," as well as providing evidence for any rapid responses needed to counteract them.  There might be some state statute which prohibits this, there might not.  I'm not an education lawyer.

For all I know, it's as easy as publishing a spreadsheet file.

For all I know, it's legally prohibited!

And As For The Community...

Freeport simply has a hotly contested election on its hands.  The claims are huge, and the publicly-available data to check them is slim.  The possible solutions are many, but so is the possible blow-back.  It's a fine line to walk.  Your vote matters.  You should vote.

Your subjective experience may vary!  Maybe you've got family who goes to the school and has primary-source information that's got you thinking things are worse than ever.  Maybe you've got some old memories of a time when things were pretty bad at the schools, yourself.  (I'm lookin' back at you, 1990's, especially 97)  Maybe you have seen a video on the internet that's got you shaken.  Maybe you haven't experienced any problems, whatsoever.

It's up to you to vote based on what you believe.

As always, The Weekly Freeporter is not making any endorsements.  I'm just providing you with one internet stranger's (or maybe pal's?) exploration into an issue that hits home.  I hope it's been helpful.

Jesse Pohlman is a 'recovering teacher' and author born and raised in Freeport, New York.  Thank you for reading, I hope it made you think.

TWF 325: School Board Candidate Forum, May 3rd, 2022, at Dodd Middle School!

 Hello, friends!

A short and simple one, today, to celebrate 325 posts on TWF:  The four candidates for School Board will be part of a "Meet The Candidates" forum.  If you have any questions, they may be able to provide answers!  Feel free to ask whatever you'd like.

Thanks for reading!  Jesse Pohlman is a Sci-Fi/Fantasy author born and raised in Freeport, New York, currently living in another LI town, with a website available at this link!