Taxpayers in Hicksville’s school district are now watching closely after Fork Lane Elementary School landed on New York State’s official accountability list for 2025-26, joining 15 other Long Island districts that earned the “target district” label because at least one school in the system showed persistently low academic performance.
The state Education Department classified Fork Lane as an ATSI school. That designation isn’t handed out after a single bad year. ATSI status carries forward from prior years as a TSI classification, which means the school’s academic struggles have been on Albany’s radar for some time. Any district housing an ATSI school automatically gets tagged as a target district too, so Hicksville now sits on both lists.
Superintendent Theodore Fulton didn’t sidestep the findings. “We are committed to our students’ academic improvement and are confident that the measures implemented in the 2025-2026 school year will strengthen future academic performance,” Fulton said. He pointed to the district’s School Comprehensive Education Planning team, which has already been working through a remediation plan. That’s not optional. Target districts are required to produce one.
The plan covers four specific areas: student achievement inside and outside the classroom, family and community engagement, professional development for teachers, and operations and facilities. It’s supposed to make lesson content more accessible and address linguistic demands for English language learners. After-school tutoring for Fork Lane students is baked into the plan as well.
Where do these designations come from? The state is federally required under the New York State Education Department’s accountability framework to identify schools posting the weakest academic numbers. Metrics include student achievement scores, progress among English language learners, attendance, and high school graduation rates. The 2025-26 accountability designations draw primarily from 2024-25 school year data, with graduation rates sourced from 2023-24.
Three designations make up the most serious accountability tier: CSI, ATSI, and TSI. All three carry real obligations. Schools that land in any of those categories can’t simply wait out the clock. They can eventually move to a lighter classification called LSI, but that can’t happen until the second school year after initial identification at the absolute earliest. Don’t expect quick exits from this list.
Statewide, 375 schools appear on the 2025-26 accountability list across those three categories. Twenty-three are on Long Island. In Nassau County, Hicksville isn’t the only district under the microscope. Hempstead was also flagged, according to Long Island Press. Suffolk County had a considerably longer tally: 14 districts identified as target districts, dwarfing Nassau County’s two.
For context on what these numbers actually mean against a national backdrop, enrollment and performance data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that accountability-driven interventions in schools with similar demographic profiles have produced measurable gains in some districts over four to six year windows, though results vary widely based on how faithfully intervention plans are carried out.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa framed the process as constructive rather than punitive, which is the kind of explanation state officials typically give. “Accountability is a powerful catalyst for meaningful change and stronger outcomes for students,” Rosa said. She added: “By aligning each school with a tailored support model, we can meet communities where they are and work in partnership to drive lasting improvement.”
That framing hasn’t stopped critics from asking why the same school names keep cycling back onto accountability lists year after year. If the support models work, the exits should be visible. So far, the 2025-26 list suggests plenty of schools haven’t found the door yet.
For Fork Lane’s 2026 school year, the district’s plan is already in motion. Whether it produces results that satisfy the state’s metrics is a question that won’t get answered until 2023-era patterns are fully behind them and 2024-2025 data shows a clear directional shift. Fulton’s team is on the clock. Hicksville taxpayers, who fund a district now carrying the target label, will be watching the numbers.