From the desk of Dr. Charles Murphy

Written by Dr. Charles Murphy Friday, 25 January 2013 00:00

Recently, I was contacted by a parent who just started to look at the sex offender registry websites. The sites were brought to her attention as a result of our email messages to the community. The parent was surprised to learn after scrolling through the Levittown database that one of her neighbors was on the list. 

Clearly, this is useful information for our residents. I strongly encourage all parents and concerned community members to use the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services website http://www.criminaljustice.state.ny.us/SomsSUBDirectory/search_index.jsp/ regularly to protect your children. Please remember the Island Trees community is comprised of several towns; therefore, using the Levittown zip code in your search may not provide all of the information needed to protect your children and/or to keep you informed of all of the registered sex offenders in our area. I suggest using several zip codes within the Island Trees community (11756, 11714, and 11783), as well as those of neighboring towns. 

At this date, there are five Level 2 and Level 3 registered sex offenders living in Levittown and more in the other towns within our school community. Therefore I strongly encourage parents to use this site periodically in order to be informed of the sex offenders living in the neighborhood.  

I believe the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services listed above may be the most up-to-date website tool for searching for New York State sex offenders.  I would, however, encourage parents to use Parent’s for Megan’s Law for its other resources and inclusion of Level 1 sex offenders who are not listed on the New York State site. The Megan’s Law website has a great deal of information to help protect your children against child predators.  

The “District Information” link on the Island Trees School District website, www.islandtrees.org, has both websites connected to our homepage. 

In closing, please be assured that Island Trees is dedicated to the safety of our students. We make it a practice to send out the information to the community through our IT-gram email system. Community members can sign up to receive all of our school messages, including sex offender notification at http://www.islandtrees.org/email/emaillist.htm/. 

We will continue to work with parents and the school community to ensure a safe school community for our children.