Superintendent Moyer: YDA funding reinstated, for now

A proposal to cut over $11,000 in funding from Youth Directions & Alternatives (YDA), a Northport-based nonprofit organization offering social and recreational programs to community members ages 10 to 18, was removed from the Northport-East Northport school district’s proposed budget Thursday evening, and the funds reinstated. 

The cut in funding would have directly impacted the group’s full-time street outreach worker position, reducing it to a 20-hour part-time position. While the YDA serves youth in the Northport-East Northport, Harborfields and Elwood school districts, the street outreach worker is assigned to serve Northport and East Northport exclusively, a designation made over 40 years ago, when the position was created. 

District residents were first asked to contribute toward the salary of a “street worker” following the 1984 drug-related murder of Northport resident Gary Lauwers by local teenager Ricky Kasso. Shortly after being arrested for the crime, Kasso, 17, committed suicide. The street worker position was created in 1985 in response to the murder/suicide, and was initially fully funded by the school district and local community. Since then, YDA has “housed” the position, though they did not create it. 

Presently the YDA contract with the Northport-East Northport school district renews annually and has the district contributing $32,000 a year to the position; this amount has not increased since 2000. The total cost of the street outreach worker position, inclusive of salary and fringe benefits, is approximately $65,000. “At one time the $32,000 covered the salary and fringe with a few dollars left over for administrative costs,” YDA Director Rod Miller told the Journal prior to yesterday’s board meeting. 

While the costs for the position have increased over the past 25 years, Miller said, the YDA has made a dedicated effort to not ask the school district for additional funding; currently the funding breakdown is $32,000 from the school district, $26,750 from the Town of Huntington, $5,000 from the Northport/East Northport Community Drug & Alcohol Task Force, and $1,250 from Union United & St. Paul’s Methodist churches, he said. Losing the $11,306 would have forced the YDA to make the position part-time to be in compliance with its personnel practices (the organization would be unable to to pay for the position’s health insurance coverage), Miller added. 

Miller and Brielle Neumann, a 2018 Northport High School graduate and the YDA’s present-day street outreach worker, expressed gratitude at the April 10 BOE meeting, after an announcement by Superintendent of Schools Dave Moyer confirmed that the over $11,000 in funds would be restored for the 2025-2026 school year. 

“What we wanted to do was thank the superintendent and the board for reinstating us in the funding for this year, we greatly appreciate it,” said Miller to the board. He reiterated the history of the street outreach worker: “This is a position the community created and asked us to really be the guardians of. So we have housed the position for the last 40 – and now it'll be 41 – years,” he said. 

“I’ve heard, as the director, many times over the years from young adults who have pointed out that for them this position was in many ways lifesaving,” Miller said at the meeting. In a detailed email to the Journal, Miller explained that after school hours (from 3 to 6pm) are often identified as a high-risk window for teens, especially when they are unsupervised; the time frame is associated with a higher likelihood of experimentation with drugs, alcohol, sexual activity and delinquent behavior,” he said. Because the street outreach worker operates when school is closed – in the evenings, over holidays, throughout the summer – kids are afforded an outlet available when counselors, social workers and psychologists at their schools might not be. Together, the school’s mental health professionals and the street outreach worker can provide “wraparound services for the young adults looking for help in the community,” Miller said.  

He estimated that over the last year, from April 2024 to March 2025, Neumann has served nearly 900 Northport-East Northport youth aged 10-18 as an exclusive full-time worker, via various programs run both inside and outside of the schools. 

The count by Miller doesn’t include some students Neumann interacts with on a regular basis, including in the high school commons every Wednesday, where Neumann has a table set up and students find in her a person they can connect with and relate to. 

“The kids will come to me and they know that I have created a nice little safe space. They’ll come up to my table and they’ll sit down and just start venting,” Neumann told the Journal in an interview scheduled prior to the announcement of the proposed cut in YDA funding. 

“My position is special because I get to have a connection outside of school too,” she said.

While much of what Neumann does in her position with the YDA occurs inside the Northport-East Northport schools, where she has built a rapport with students and become a familiar and friendly face, her reach extends past the school walls. She’s the liaison between the high school’s 1Life club and the Northport-East Northport Drug and Alcohol Task Force, and assists the district’s S.H.A.R.E club advisors in facilitating lunch meetings and events. She conducts “push in” presentations for middle school health education students and oftentimes will do outreach at the local pizzeria, or Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, where students tend to gather after school.

“These are all the kids I’ve built a relationship with in school. So now I see them outside school,” Neumann said. She’ll tell them about Friday drop-in at the YDA’s Northport Village location, from 3:30 to 6pm, an open invite for middle school kids to come and hang out during those critical after-school hours and socialize, play video or board games and just chat. 

“And now I’m promoting a place where it’s safe, they have adult supervision, there’s snacks, little Capri Suns. And it’s a good third place for them to be. You have school and home and now you have the YDA,” she said. 

While with the YDA, Neumann has undergone training to help her handle many situations, in particular those dealing with mental health issues. She gave an example of a student who approached her about a friend they thought might be suicidal. Other times it’s the daily things, interactions with friends, pressure from their families, that kids like to talk about. 

For now, Neumann will continue as street outreach worker, the reinstatement of funds ensuring her full-time position through the 2025-2026 school year. A recent administrative resignation “put us in a better situation,” Superintendent Moyer explained at the BOE meeting, though he stopped short of guaranteeing the position past next year. “We thought that since we could afford to put it back in, we could put it back in and continue to evaluate it,” he said.  

In the days leading up to the meeting, Miller wrote a letter to BOE President Carol Taylor requesting that the board reinstate the YDA’s full funding. The group’s board of directors also launched a social media campaign to alert the community of the potential cut. 

“The huge number of letters/emails of support that the community sent to the superintendent and board of education are indicative of just how many lives have been impacted by the street outreach worker position since its inception in 1985,” Miller told the Journal. “These letters were not only from parents whose children are currently participating in YDA programs, but also from adults who shared how their lives were positively impacted as a result of connecting with the street outreach worker over 30 years ago.”