On Long Island: The Lost Season

By Ellie McGrath

One sunny Monday morning in Levittown, Long Island, teen-agers ran out of the small ranch houses and Cape Cods, darting through carports, and leaving back doors swinging and slamming. Some dashed through the streets, shouting, and others exuberantly made haste on their skateboards. One long-haired boy hustled along to the tune of a blaring radio. Their destination? MacArthur High School, a sprawling, two-story brick building with bright turquoise trim, an All-American high school right down to its official colors: red, white and blue. Bouncing" with excitement, the youngsters converged in the schoolyard and waited anxiously for the doors to open.

The kids were celebrating the first day of school almost two months after the last of the nation's other classrooms had hummed back to life. Vacation had blended into fall and Indian summer while the students waited for school to start. Leaves turned brown and fell to the ground. For 34 school days, nearly all Levittown's teachers had been on strike over wages, job security, fringe benefits, and their desire to retain special programs in the curriculum. Only that morning they had agreed to end the longest teacher strike of 1978.

The bitter fight in Levittown between teacher and taxpayer involved basic problems that are plaguing school districts across the country. It was no coincidence that three conservative members were elected to the seven-member school board on the same day that Howard Jarvis pushed the tax-cutting Proposition 13 through in California.

The community thrown into turmoil over its schools sprouted in 1947 in a former potato field. Well suited and priced for ex-G.I.s, Levittown soon became synonymous with instant and inexpensive suburban living: a home of one's own, a plot of land, no big city problems, no industry. Levittown also became a symbol of cookie-cutter suburban sameness (immortalized by Pete Seeger in a song about "little boxes made of ticky-tacky.")

Like other suburbs, Levittown financed its education system mainly through property taxes. In the 1970s, as school costs soared, the tax bill for many of those neat little houses all in a row started hitting $200 and more a month. Original owners, now on fixed incomes and their children grown, found themselves hard pressed. To make matters worse, some people felt they were not getting their money's worth, claiming the schools were failing to teach the basics. The result was a hard line on taxes. "I'm a fighter for my kids," says Joan Anderson, the mother of four. "But I'm working two jobs and my husband is out of work. We just couldn't afford to pay any more."

But the teachers, faced with the same inflationary problems as the taxpayers. had money troubles of their own. Although a strike by teachers is against the law m New York State, only five of the 630 staff members initially crossed the picket lines. Throughout the seven week of the strike, the teachers showed remark able unity and zeal: just one other decided to go back to work.

Trying to keep the schools going, the board hired more than 300 substitute teachers. They were able to conduct most classes in the elementary schools, but could maintain only a skeletal program in the high schools. The outsiders also increased the rancor. Striking teachers showed up every morning to taunt the scabs, and taxpayers came to taunt the strikers. STARVE, one placard advised the teachers, and another jeered: GOODBYE TO YOUR LIFE SAVINGS.

Some high school students tried to salvage their education by attending classes run by substitutes, but the instruction was irregular and often disorganized.

Some went to "freedom schools," conducted voluntarily by striking teachers in private homes. Others marched outside the houses of school board members, chanting "We want school!" Toward the end, about 70 students staged an all-night sit-in at MacArthur High. But many high school students simply slept late, got bored, or found part-time jobs. Some went off to private schools.

For one typical family, the Caponis, putting five children into private schools was impossible. Sabato Caponi, a high school junior, was missing school work that he needed to prepare for his regents exams, which in New York state qualify students for college scholarship aid. His solution was to board with his grandparents in Valley Stream (30 minutes away) and attend the high school there. But to do that the Caponis had to make their son the ward of his grandparents. 'I didn't like the idea of signing over the guardianship papers," says Rae Caponi, Sabato's mother. "It's hard enough when they're 18 and go away to college." Sabato makes it home on weekends but rarely on week nights. "I hated the board for breaking up my family," says Mrs. Caponi.

In the end, the school board pretty much won the battle with the union. The teachers' salaries will be frozen for a year and a half, and they will get only 5% raises in each of the following two years. The teachers did win guaranteed teacher-pupil ratios for special programs, but at a terrible price. Union President Martin Cullinan is serving 20 days in jail for disregarding a court order to go back to work. The union must pay $170,000 in fines, which will eventually go to the school district, and each teacher has been fined two days' pay for every day on strike. The average loss: over $5,000. In effect, Levittown teachers will be working until the end of January without pay. Some have had to sell their houses, borrow to the limit, and bite into savings.

It will be a long, long time before things are normal again in the Levittown schools. The strike's bitterness reverberates harshly. "The teachers' union was for the teachers," says Dawn Fishbein, a slim and intense MacArthur senior. "But the board of education was supposed to be for us. Instead, it was a board of taxation." Says Rae Anne Caponi, Sabato's sister: 'Tm so glad to be back. But I'm worried about college credit courses and advanced placement tests." In Rae Anne's first psychology class, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to talk about the strike. One boy blurted, "I feel screwed." The problem of making up the lost work calls for the sort of student-teacher cooperation that money cannot buy and contracts cannot ratify.

At MacArthur High the shiny corridors echo emptily after 2:30. Many teachers and students leave as soon as possible after the last bell. "I'm working hard not to take it out on the students," says one lanky high school teacher. He is wearing a defiant lapel button picturing two crossed boards. (One of the school board members allegedly threatened to hit the teachers' union with a two-by-four, then hit it again with a four-by-six when it was down.) Other teachers wear buttons reading I GAVE TO LEVITTOWN. So far, more than 20 teachers have resigned. A dozen highly paid veterans have chosen to retire on terms offered by the board: a $5,000 payment and, in effect, the cancellation of the fines.

Then there is the handful of teachers who crossed the picket lines. "We call them stabs, because they cut our throats," says one young junior high teacher. One teacher who crossed the picket lines had his windshield broken and his tires slashed. He kept replacing tires, only to have the replacements cut as well--ten in all. "My students consider me a hero," he says, "but the teachers consider me a scab." When one school secretary asked a teacher if he had seen one of his nonstriking colleagues anywhere in the halls, he looked at her blankly. "Who?" he asked. "I don't know that name."

Administrators face a different morale problem. "I shudder to think .of the discipline cases and the future of home-school cooperation," says one principal. "What are we going to say now when a kid cuts classes?" Students saw some teachers break windows in school buses. Indeed, some parents have told their children that they do not have to obey certain teachers any more. 'They set a bad example," declares MacArthur Junior Suzanne Lewis. "They broke the law."

The new school board members are proud of their tough stand. Says Norman Murray, the father of seven children and a former FBI man: "I don't have a corner on the world's wisdom, but I think we were right." He plans to spend much of the money that the district makes from teacher and union fines on remedial pro grams in basic skills.

As Levittown tries to recover from the strike, FOR SALE signs stand next to pumpkins in front of many houses. The Caponi house in the Wantagh neighborhood is one of them. Although the Caponis had decided to sell before the teacher trouble, they are even more eager to move now.

Unfortunately for sellers, Levittown houses have declined in value. "One Sunday the real estate fellow was bringing a couple out," says Rae Caponi. "When they found out what school district the house was in, they said 'No way.' " A mile down the road at MacArthur High School, the playing fields that in previous falls were ablaze with red and white jerseys are now deserted. Levittown likes its football, and people used to find the game a unifying force. Not this year. The schedule was canceled. For three or four seniors, the lost season means lost scholarships. "I would have done anything to have played this year," says Co-Captain Roger Lambert. "We were coming along great, and we could have gone undefeated." In Levittown, autumn has been a lost season all around .

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