To the Editor:

My last letter in a January The Record Review,  questioned the administration's rationale that new construction at Fox Lane High School is necessary based on increasing student enrollment over the next decade. An officious looking response from the board of education president dismissed my concerns as "misinformation."

No board record exists to my knowledge indicating that the board resolved to write that particular letter. Mrs. Fallon, the board's president, was out of line, although probably inadvertently, when ascribing the board's imprimatur to her private thoughts.

Indeed, for the board to respond to my letter, which I would welcome, a resolution would have to be deliberated and then passed by a majority in a public meeting.

As for what in my query was "misinformational" - that was,never indicated. Worse, for a public body to characterize a citizen's opinion as "misinformation" doesn't encourage others to voice similar concerns.

Now if I can deal with another space issue, this time in the science wing.

The district asserts-that construction of more science classrooms is necessary soon to accommodate an anticipated student population. This, too, is based on the erroneous assumption that increasing population by 40 percent necessitates 40 percent more classroom sections.

A case in point, my 1976 FLHS yearbook shows a picture of the science department with 13 teachers. These 13 taught in the same space we have now with 1,545 students in the high school. (The total district population was 4,359.)

According to the 2000-2001 Master Schedule, we have 12 teachers in the science department for 975 students.

I don't get it. Are we to take seriously a proposition to add to the science wing to accommodate a population a decade from now which will presumably be less than what we had in 1976?

To clarify this, it would be helpful to see the workload of those 13 instructors in 1976. We could see how many teachers were teaching how many sections and what the class sizes were.

We know for the current year, for example, some science teachers teach four classes, some three classes and one has five classes. The department chair, strangely enough, appears not to teach any classes at all.

Why is a department chair in a high school not assigned classes? Fox Lane is not a research university. Are there not enough students? Are there too many teachers?

When this department chair has a 1999 salary of $101,043, 1 would say students deserve the direct benefit of his experience. Taxpayers, always the last to know, deserve a better utilization of a very well compensated staff.

Phil Christe

Mount Kisco