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By Claire Walla The future of the Youth Advocacy and Resource Development (YARD)summer beach program is in flux. Again. And the Sag Harbor Board ofEducation remains at a standstill. Last year around this time, school board members discussed thefeasibility of continuing to run the summer beach program at LongBeach in Sag Harbor. The question was not the viability of theprogram board members agreed it served an important function forthe community, catering to 60 to 80 kids a night but rather themanner in which it operated. Issues first arose a few years ago when auditors discovered thatwhile YARD had long operated autonomously from the district running programs without formal approval from the school board its finances had in fact been funneled through the district. This was mitigated last year when the YARD board formed anon-profit entity, Friends of YARD, to collect all fundssolicited for the program. However, Sag Harbor School District Superintendent Dr. Grattopointed out that last year the school board decided not to beinvolved in the summer beach program after summer 2011, leaving theorganization to find another entity to oversee its operations goingforward. YARD has been in discussions with Southampton Town, which is a bigproponent of the summer beach program. However, according to RusselKratoville, Southampton Town Management Services Administrator,while the town will continue to fund the program with its annualcontribution of $15,000, it does not have the means run theprogram. (This would require hiring additional staff.) Now, as discussed at a school board meeting last Monday, June 4,the board faces many of the same problems it faced last year. The nut of the issue comes down to a simple philosophical question,Dr. Gratto said: should the district be responsible foradministering a summer program? If the district decided to formally take on the program, onenecessary course of action would be to assign district supervision,which Mary Anne Miller, school board president, said is necessaryfor any district program. Not only might this involve extra costs,she went on, but it would add more to administrators summerschedules. I don t think our administrators are looking for more work, board member Walter Wilcoxen added. If the district was responsiblefor the program, he continued, There are many costs in the YARDfunction we may end up paying for. Currently, the school contributes $10,000 annually to YARD. The total cost of YARD services, including both the summer beachprogram and the afterschool program during the school year, isabout $80,000, according to school board member and YARD Board ofDirectors member Sandi Kruel. And $23,000 of that goes to thesummer beach program. Kruel went on to explain that the vast majority of funding for theprogram comes not from the school district, but from differentmunicipalities: New York State, Suffolk County, Southampton Town,Sag Harbor and even North Haven Village. She said cost isn t an issue. We haven t been short on money in 13 years [since YARD wasfounded], a noticeably frustrated Kruel stated. I don tforesee us coming up short this year. For the school to run a program that incorporates donations fromseveral different municipalities, however, Dr. Gratto explained thedistrict would need each entity to sign what s called a MunicipalCooperative Agreement. He is currently figuring out how long thatagreement requiring signatures from the village, town, countyand state would take to get finalized. Board members Miller and Wilcoxen additionally expressed concernthat they still had not seen contracts from any entity other thanSouthampton Town, and would not be confident with YARD s fundinggoing forward until they could be certain these funding streamswere officially designated for the year. Kruel said she would like for the summer program to begin the weekafter graduation. But whether it will have untangled all these details before thenremains to be seen. Popularity: 1% [ ? ]. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Fishing Boat Motors , China Hidea Outboard Motor for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Long Shaft Outboard Motors.
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