New Hyde Park voters will decide Tuesday whether to put a longtime trustee back on the school board or give a younger newcomer a chance.
Parent Shamini Sivalingam and former 15-year trustee Patricia Rudd are running for the seat current Trustee Joan Romagnoli is leaving after 12 years.
Rudd moved to Michigan for work in 2014 and returned to the district about a year ago. She has said her experience and knowledge would aid the district in a time of shifting educational policy.
She was active with the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association and involved with education lobbying efforts in Albany and Washington, D.C., she has said.
“… I think at this point in the game, we really need someone with experience, especially since Joan (Romagnoli) is stepping down,” she said in an interview last month.
Sivalingam, on the other hand, has said she would bring a new “solution-based” perspective to increase parent involvement and find ways to fund new programs outside of budget restrictions.
A native of Malaysia who moved to the U.S. in 2000, Sivalingam would also represent the district’s increased racial diversity and engage more parents of minority ethnic backgrounds, she has said.
”Two brains are smarter than one brain, and I think there are many, many smart people in the community, and I think we have to attract that level of commitment from within the community to come up with those ideas,” Sivalingam said in an interview last month.
Rudd and Sivalingam agreed that declining parent involvement is an issue in New Hyde Park-Garden City Park, but they diverged on how the district should address Common Core standards.
Rudd has said she would like to see the federal government move away from the standards and return control to local school districts, she said.
Sivalingam has said the school board should deal with the standards more proactively. She said she thinks they have educational value but have been hampered by a bungled rollout.
Current school board President Ernest Gentile and Trustee Jennifer Kerrane are also running unopposed for re-election.
District residents will vote for the three school board seats and the 2016-2017 New Hyde Park-Garden City Park and Sewanhaka high school district budgets from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. May 17 at the Manor Oaks School, 1950 Hillside Ave. in New Hyde Park.
