One East Williston school board trustee is staying put, another is stepping down and an Albertson insurance salesman is aiming to replace her.
Two-term incumbent Trustee David Keefe is running unopposed for a third three-year term, but Barbara Slone, who ran with Keefe in 2010, has decided not to pursue re-election.
Wheatley School alumnus and 41-year district resident Alan Littman is making an unopposed bid for her seat.
Slone, a nurse practitioner at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, said her job has become to demanding to allow her to stay on the school board.
“I didn’t used to work 12-hour shifts six years ago, but I do now,” said Keefe, of Roslyn Heights.
Keefe said he thinks he brings a “unique perspective” to the board as its only senior citizen living on a fixed income. He retired from teaching in the Hempstead school district 12 years ago, he said.
Littman has been considering a school board run for about a year and a half, he said. He has served on the boards of charitable foundations for 32 years and started some of his own, he said, but has never done anything that has directly affected the community in which he lives.
Because the district is running smoothly under a “cohesive” school board, Littman said he would take direction from current trustees at the start of his term.
“I’m not coming in here with these grand plans where I think we need to have sweeping changes,” he said. “I think the most important thing for me to do is to come in and really learn my role and then sort of develop some strategies based on what the existing board sees the direction should be.”
Slone and Keefe said they are proud of achieving that cohesion in the past six years.
Before they came onto the school board, it was common for meetings to last until midnight and unanimous votes were rare, Slone said. The board now votes together most often, she said, and has greatly strengthened residents’ trust in it.
“This is a board that has gotten the job done to the satisfaction of the community and to the benefit of our students,” Slone said.
In Slone’s and Keefe’s terms, the board has renegotiated contracts with every employee bargaining unit and improved services for students while keeping tax increases to a minimum, Slone said.
Keefe said the board has been able to “keep the forefront of the district in academia” under the difficult fiscal circumstances the state’s cap on tax levy increases has created.
In his third term, he said, he wants to see trustees continue to work cohesively and come to even better understand its role as a collective body within the district rather than a group of individuals.
“You need to understand what the board’s role is and what the administration’s role is,” Keefe said. “Once you’ve done that you then need to be able to answer where you come as an individual board member, where your thoughts and ideas and stands fit in with the other four members on the board.”
Keefe said he thinks Littman would do well on the board and that current members would “nurture” him as a new trustee.
Keefe is a 56-year Mineola resident and for 12 years has served on the board of directors for the New York State Teacher Retirement System, one of two pension funds to which school districts contribute.
Littman is a vice president with NFP, a national insurance consulting firm. He has helped raise money and supported East Williston school sports programs through the Wildcat Foundation, he said.
East Williston district residents will vote for the two school board seats and the district’s 2016-2017 budget on May 17.
