In The News | Long Island Tutoring Service

Long Island students struggle to find SAT testing sites

By

Kristin Thorne

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

SEAFORD, Long Island (WABC) -- Fourteen high schools across Long Island which were supposed to serve as testing sites for the SAT's on Saturday are now no longer offering the exams.
St. Dominic High School senior Matthew Blanchard, of North Bellmore, was supposed to take the exam on Saturday at Seaford High School, which is one of the closed sites.
Matthew has registered to take the SAT five times - in March, May, June, August and September. It has been cancelled every time with little to no explanation.
"We just want to move forward and we can't seem to do that right now," his mother Jeanne Blanchard said.
The superintendent of the Seaford School District said on Wednesday school officials decided not to offer the exam due to health concerns for its students.
"In order to ensure a safe environment for our students and staff to take and administer the SAT's, the district is offering the exam to any Seaford Junior or Senior interested on October 14th during the school day," Superintendent Adele Pecora said.
Matthew needs the score to apply for an ROTC college scholarship.
"He's been prepping since December of 2019, thinking that he was going to take the March exam before everything with COVID took place," Jeanne Blanchard said. "I've kind of been making him follow through with it thinking the next test is going to come, the next test is going to come and they don't."
The College Board, the group which sponsors the SAT's, said the decision to offer the exam is left up to each individual school and the school is able to close the testing site right up until the day of the test.
"While College Board can't directly control test center capacity and availability, we're working to ensure as many students as possible are able to test safely," the College Board said on its website.
College Board said across the country 183,000 September-registered students and 154,000 October-registered students are unable to take the test as of September 21.
The high schools which were supposed to serve as testing sites on Saturday, September 26, and are now closed are: Amityville High School, Centereach High School, Connetquot High School, Deer Park High School, Elmont High School, H. Frank Carey High School, Kellenberg Memorial High School, New Hyde Park High School, Plainedge High School, Roslyn High School, Ross School, Seaford High School, Southampton High School and Walt Whitman High School.
"Sponsoring the SAT with students mixing beyond their cohorts with students from other schools would complicate the cohort arrangement we have created," a spokesperson for Kellenberg Memorial High School said in a statement to Eyewitness News.
Like Seaford, Kellenberg is arranging with the College Board to offer the SAT's during the week to only its students.
Although most colleges are not requiring SAT scores for admission this year, the scores are mandatory for many college scholarships.
Jo-Ann Annunziato with Long Island Tutoring Service in Massapequa said some of her students have rescheduled their testing dates so many times, they are ready to give up on taking the exam.
"Some testing centers are canceling and others are not," she said. "So if you were lucky enough to sign up for one that's not cancelling, then you get to take the test. But we've had students who have been signed up for different centers and have been cancelled every time," she said.
Annunziato said she has been working with some students since last winter prepping for the exam.
"We're offering free SAT classes just for students who have always prepped for the exam because they have all worked so hard and they're ready and they want to take it," she said.
Officials with Connetquot High School said they are trying to have the school reinstated as a testing site, but said in a message to parents on Tuesday that New York State representatives of the College Board have not confirmed their intention on allowing the high school to be a center for the October 3 test date.
"The District is working diligently to ensure all students are given opportunities for both a make-up for the September 26 date as well as the October 3 date for the SAT exams," the message read.
Annunziato said students shouldn't dismiss the SAT's no matter the level of frustration because colleges and universities will still consider the scores as part of a student's application. She said the applications are "test optional" not "test blind."

LONG ISLAND EDUCATION
More parents inquiring about tutoring, exploring home-school options for fall

With questions on what the school year will look like in the fall, parents are navigating how they will balance it all. Credit: Kendall Rodriguez
By Jesse Coburn
jesse.coburn@newsday.com @jesse_coburn
Updated August 4, 2020 4:05 PM

With questions swirling about what school will look like on Long Island this fall, educators working outside schools described surging interest from parents seeking alternatives for their children's education as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Fears about the safety of in-person instruction, dissatisfaction with distance learning and concerns kids are falling behind are fueling the demand, the directors of tutoring and after-school programs said. Educators said they've seen a spike in inquiries from parents considering home-schooling their children, although it's too soon to know whether a drop in school enrollment will follow.
"Everybody's looking for alternatives," said Jo-Ann Annunziato, director of Long Island Tutoring Service in North Massapequa. Annunziato said she has received four to five calls a day in recent weeks from parents looking for tutors to help with home schooling.
"A lot of kids struggled with remote learning, and I think a lot of parents struggled with it as well," she said. "People just don't want to go back and do that again."

Stephanie Eggers of North Babylon counts herself among such parents.
"There were a lot of tears on my part and tears on my kids' parts," Eggers, 38, said of the remote instruction her 9- and 7-year-old sons received this spring. She said she struggled to juggle the demands of her part-time job and the help her kids needed with distance learning.

"I felt like I was being pulled in every direction, and I felt like my kids were not getting the best from me, but they also weren't getting the best experience in general for school," she said.
School districts moved to remote learning in March, after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo closed schools statewide to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The governor has said he will announce in the first week of August whether schools will reopen this fall.
New York State asked parents to inform their school districts by Aug. 1 if they planned to home-school their children this upcoming school year. But parents in New York may begin home-schooling their children at any time if they notify their districts within 14 days of beginning home instruction.
Businesses like Annunziato's are bulking up services to accommodate a possible influx of new customers, whether remote learning returns or not. Long Island Tutoring Service plans to expand group instruction programs and hire at least five more teachers to supplement the 16 already on staff.
"We anticipate that there will be plenty of work for them," Annunziato said.
Village East Gifted, which offers classes to academically advanced children and has locations in Huntington Station and Roslyn Heights, has introduced daytime classes for 4- to 15-year-olds in addition to its existing array of courses.
"We're starting to get people that are coming out of the woodwork," said Tobi J. Phillips, the program's founder. "They want their kids to have more education because they weren't getting enough last semester."
Long Island Tutorial Services of West Sayville expects to continue a small-group instruction program for students it began this summer into the fall.
"We're not driving this, we're responding to it," company vice president Miles Malone said of the heightened interest.
The company primarily is contracted by school districts to teach children who cannot attend school in person for various reasons, but it also offers private tutoring.
Malone, Phillips and Annunziato all said they've heard from more parents considering home-schooling their children by themselves or with the help of private instructors.
"There has been a growing movement just in general on Long Island of parents wanting to home-school," Annunziato said. "The whole pandemic just accelerated that."
New Yorkers who want to home-school their children must notify their school districts and submit study plans, quarterly reports and a year-end evaluation, according to Jennifer Snyder, co-president of Homeschool New York, an advocacy and support organization. A certified teacher is not needed for instruction, although some parents hire private tutors for the task.
Eggers is one Long Island parent thinking of making the switch. If distance learning is a big part of North Babylon's plans for her kids' education in the fall, Eggers said she may begin teaching them herself.
"If there is an option to go back to school, as long as it is not awful, I want to try to make it work," she said. But "if the distancing learning thing is a major component, it's going to be really hard for me to do that well for my children."
Some on Long Island expressed concern about the ramifications on local schools if droves of parents who can afford it pull their kids and educate them themselves.
"For me, that's really a question of equity more than anything else," Baldwin schools Superintendent Shari Camhi said. "Can middle-class and students of poverty, can their families afford private tutoring?"
Programs at Long Island Tutoring Service, Long Island Tutorial Services and Village East Gifted range from $45 per hour for group classes to $175 per hour for one-on-one instruction.
Camhi said her district fielded a few questions from parents this summer about home-schooling their children. But the district has not seen an increase in parents actually opting to do so, she said.
Elaine Gross, the founder and president of the Long Island civil rights group ERASE Racism, called the prospect of declining enrollment in local public schools "worrying."
"We already have a tremendous amount of fragmentation here on Long Island because we have so many different school districts," she said. "It could exacerbate the segregation for sure."
CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story omitted that parents in New York may begin home-schooling their children at any time if they notify their districts within 14 days of beginning home instruction.

By Jesse Coburn
jesse.coburn@newsday.com @jesse_coburn
Jesse Coburn covers transportation and education. He's worked at Newsday since 2016.

LIFESTYLEFAMILY
9 tips for getting back into the back-to-school routine

Parents and kids should write down the biggest challenges of getting out in the morning, the concrete steps that need to be taken to overcome those challenges and what can be done in advance, recommends one parenting coach from Long Island. Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto/monkeybusinessimages
By Lisa Chamoff
Special to Newsday
Updated August 24, 2018 12:13 PM

Though it’s still summer, it’s not too early to prepare for getting back into the back-to-school routine. Here are some top tips from local experts, along with a collection of apps to get -- and keep -- things organized.
Getting out of the house on time
Cindy Goldrich of PTS Coaching in Roslyn Heights, which provides education and support for parents of children dealing with ADHD and executive function challenges, recommends that parents and kids write down the biggest challenges of getting out in the morning, the concrete steps that need to be taken to overcome those challenges and what can be done in advance.
If breakfast in the morning is a hassle because children are picky eaters, create a menu on a door tag and ask them choose what they want to eat the night before, like hotels do, suggests Goldrich, who owns the business.
Discuss in advance with your child who’s responsible for waking them and how many reminders is reasonable. Have kids responsible for tracking time -- with support from their parents.
“Even if the kid is younger, they can have an alarm,” Goldrich says. “They should get used to the idea of looking at a clock.”
Getting schedules organized
Bedtime
If bedtime has been pushed later in the summer, try getting back to a normal routine about two weeks before school starts, recommends Huntington-based sleep consultant Kristy Sileo, founder of Blissful Bedtimes. “Over the summer, people tend to let bedtime creep later and later because of barbecues and family events,” Sileo says. “About two weeks out, you want to get back to normal.”
Kids in kindergarten and first grade can go back to their regular bedtimes right away, while older kids can get back more incrementally.
“Kids love routine,” Sileo says. “When you get back into what is normal, they really benefit from that.”
Picking out clothes
Betty Day, the owner of North Shore Closets, a custom storage company based in Deer Park, says children’s closets should have lower rods that they can reach, with higher rods that parents can access to hold more formal clothing.
Parents can lay out outfits together with their kids the night before school and put the clothes on a valet rod or separate hanger.
Goldrich of PTS Coaching recommends a door tag – similar to the one she recommends using to choose breakfast the next day – that parents fill out with the weather forecast and the next day’s activities so it’s easier to pick out the proper clothing.
Preparing lunches
Alison Levison, who worked for many years as registered dietician at schools and hospitals, recommends packing lunches with small finger foods for snacks for young children, such as crackers and hummus. Snacks such as celery and carrot sticks can be packed with low-fat dressings and cut-up fruit can be served with yogurt dips, or puree fruit and put it in plain yogurt.
“They’re more likely to eat the fruit than when it’s plain,” Levison says.
Look for sugar-free flavored waters.
Levison recommends that children participate in putting together lunches.
“They’re more likely to eat it if they make it themselves,” Levison says. “The more input they have, the better chance of them eating it.”
Designating a workspace
Before the school year begins, take time to establish a dedicated homework area for your child, says Amanda Moore of Long Beach interior design firm Wolf & Wing.
“If it must be at the multi-functional dining room table, then create a rolling cart full of homework necessities that can be rolled up to the dining table and then back into a closet when not in use,” Moore says. “If your child has a desk anywhere in the house, make sure it is clean, stocked and ready for the school year at least several days in advance.”
Braun of Organize Your Life recommends that homework be done at a desk in the child’s room with bins for supplies. They also shouldn’t have toys in their room, instead storing them in a den, basement or designated play area.
Storing classwork and art
Katharine Posillico McGowan, who owns Huntington-based Katharine Jessica Interior Design, says that while refrigerators are popular spots for storing art, they can often get cluttered. She recommends a pin-up panel for the wall or a clothes line with metal clips.
Custom cork boards are also popular and can be a great way to match décor.
“You can get a cork board in any color,” Posillico McGowan says. “If the kitchen is gray and navy, you can have a navy cork board.”
While the temptation is there to save every drawing and collage your kids make, it's vital to keep purging all the artwork that comes through your door, says Moore of Wolf & Wing.
“Some of our clients like to get their children involved in this editing process by creating a ‘gallery’ where the work they are most proud of, chosen by them, is displayed for a week or so," she says. "Then it is replaced by new favorites, again chosen by the child.”
For storing everything not on display, Moore recommends having one extra-large clear bin for each child, cardboard tubes for every grade level through the end of elementary school, the same number of flat archival photo boxes, a flat file that can double as a coffee table in a playroom or basement, a vintage suitcase or a dedicated dresser drawer or under-bed box.
Dealing with electronics
If over the summer you had a “no rules” philosophy when it comes to screen time, Adele Testani Tongish, the administrator of the Half Hollow Hills Parents and Educators for Digitally Balanced Kids Facebook group, recommends making sure to start easing back the screen time limits a few weeks before school starts.
“Getting kids on an overall more regular schedule as summer ends will help with the transition,” she says. “Incorporate some learning time, consistent sleep and wake times as well as screen time rules.”
Homework
For homework routines, Jo-Ann Annunziato of Massapequa-based Long Island Tutoring Service recommends creating a space free of distractions.
“Homework should be done at consistent times, but don’t be too rigid,” Annunziato says. “Allow for some decompression time after school if necessary. Many kids benefit tremendously from this, particularly students with special needs. Allow for short breaks as necessary.”
Annunziato advises parents not to hover while their children are working.
“Gentle reminders to stay on track are fine while they work,” she says. “If they are struggling, though, don’t let them become overwhelmed. Help them break down tasks and set small goals to be completed one at a time.”
Don’t be afraid to seek outside help for a child who is really struggling.
“Talk to the teacher or an education professional,” Annunziato says. “Seeking out help can make homework time and general school work so much easier.”
Apps to help
Cozi Family Organizer: This app organizes activities and events as well as recipes and shopping lists.
Lala Lunchbox: Suggestions for school lunches.
ArtKive: Send a box of your kids’ artwork and have it turned into a keepsake book that’s also accessible on your devices.
Here Comes the Bus: Participating school districts share the location of their buses so parents and kids know when it will arrive.
MyHomework: Students can track assignments, projects and tests and receive due date reminders.
By Lisa Chamoff
Special to Newsday

To keep schedules in sync, use a dry erase board with schedules in a different color for each child or a family calendar with different colors, suggests Cynthia Braun, a professional organizer who works with families through her company, Organize Your Life in Lake Grove.
Parents also should have activities stored in their phones or organizers, but older kids can have their own calendar on a bulletin board in their room.
“You have to teach the kids to be more responsible,” Braun says. “If there’s a conflicting event, let your kid make the decision.”