The Herricks School District is joining the Town of North Hempstead to push legislation that would allow the school district to charge landlords who illegally rent to families for the cost of school tuition.
At a school board meeting last week, Herricks Superintendent of Schools John Bierwirth said he and Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman collaborated on drafting a state law that would hold landlords liable for tuition costs of children of families living in illegally rented apartments.
“This would do a lot to change our power to be able to address illegal apartments,” Bierwirth said.
The issue of children who are living illegally within the Herricks school district and attending district schools was a prime topic of discussion when Kaiman and state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) made a joint appearance at a Herricks School Board meeting several months ago.
Bierwirth said the support of Martins and state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck) is being sought for the legislation.
Bierwirth said two students attending the school district for one year costs the district $30,000 to $40,000.
Bierwirth said landlords found by the Town of North Hempstead to be renting illegal housing units can be forced to remove illegally installed kitchens and pay fines.
But the school board must absorb the cost of educating students whose families were renting illegally.
“The town gets something out of it. We get nothing,” Bierwirth said.
If children are illegally registered through the use of an address in the district where the student’s family does not reside, then the school board can take action.
“If they’re outright cheating, the school district can address it,” Bierwirth said.
But Bierwirth said the school board is obligated to educate all children living in the school district. And typically, he said, illegal living situations take a year or more in the court system to sort them out.
“If it’s a tent or an illegal rental, and there’s nothing we can do,” Bierwirth said. “If they’re still physically present, we have to educate them.”
Working with the town on the problem has enabled Herricks to enhance its ability to identify illegal rentals, Bierwirth said.
People who rent an illegal apartment without knowing it can’t be held liable for the costs the school district incurs. The new legislation would make the landlord setting up illegal apartments culpable, Bierwirth said.
“[Renters] cannot be sued but the landlord could be,” Bierwirth said.
The proposed legislation is Herricks’ latest strategy to deal with the problem of illegal rentals in the district. Last year, it hired private Investigator Joseph Wendling to ferret out cases of illegal occupancy, and Wendling has uncovered a number of illegal rentals in the past year.
Bierwirth said he also appreciates the continued efforts of residents to report suspicious living circumstances because he “doesn’t have eyes everywhere.”
In other developments:
• Bierwirth reported that Herricks High School was ranked 96th nationally in Newsweek’s annual ratings for best U.S. high schools.
But discounting so-called “magnet schools” in the rankings, he said Herricks would rank 26th. He noted that Herricks was 202nd in the Washington Post’s rankings. He also repeated his criticism of U.S. News & World Report, which he said either ranks Herricks highly or not at all – as it did this year.
“I don’t see the data and as the man says, I can’t see the data,” said Bierwirth, whose comments mirror complaints of other local educators about the annual polls.
