I attended the, “Meet the Candidates Night,” at the high school last Monday evening. It was very encouraging to have five individuals willing to volunteer to serve our community as board of education trustees, given the significant self-sacrifice these positions entail.
Although all the first time candidates, Mr. Magaldi, Ms. Levin and Mr. Manopella, agreed that a reconfiguration of the district’s schools is necessary, all presented their beliefs that it was a lack of engagement of the entire community and collaboration efforts on the part of the board of education in the reconfiguration planning that has caused the derisiveness in the community.
This shows a lack of fully understanding the history of this endeavor.
Over the last four years the board of education and administration has tried to garner the wants of the community by employing consultants, forming focus groups and committees, conducting surveys, giving presentations with Q&As at public meetings, receiving and answering innumerable e-mails and conducting two bond votes. I truly don’t believe that any more could have been done.
At the end of the day, no matter how long it took and regardless of the option chosen, the entire community would not be in 100 percent agreement. What’s called for now is for us to let go of our individual desires and work together to transition the children in a positive manner.
Let’s put our money where our mouths are and let the educational professionals that we are so proud of do their thing. All the current students and those yet to come will be better served under the new paradigm.
Another laudable goal of the first-time candidates is their desire to help form a cohesive board of education that works together for the betterment of the district.
Again, the new candidates didn’t seem to be aware that the two board of education members up for re-election, Mr. Hornberger and Mr. Hale, along with Trustee Napolitano, have repeatedly tried to foster collaboration of the board and have appealed to the other two members to participate in the process.
I witnessed first hand at a board of education meeting, Ms. Napolitano begging Mr. McGrath to please offer an option for consideration. His response was, “I’ll get back to you.”
You see, the other two trustees decided a long time ago that they didn’t want to change anything in the district and have been stubbornly steadfast in not moving an inch to work with the other board members. If these new candidates truly want change in the board’s work ethic, they are opposing the wrong incumbents.
Mr. Manopella is the executive director of a hospital and believes his work experience of doing more with less will transition well to the school environment. Although there are undoubtedly some areas of school operations where this is applicable, he seems to be unaware of what’s contained the district’s employment contracts to hinder this effort.
In my experience, health care employment contracts do not have clauses about limiting the number of staff you can excess, but our teacher contract does. Health care unions unlike teacher unions also typically have some financial responsibility directly to their members such as pension and/or health care benefits. Although the employer contributes to the funds, the union is responsible for the plans financial viability. Between the employers’ ability to excess employees as necessary and the union’s financial responsibilities, the health care unions are motivated to come to the table and bargain during economic downturns.
The teacher’s union has no such reason to do so and there is no reason to think anything has changed. The unions rejected the recent requests by administration and the board of education to hold talks on the subject of re-opening contracts to avoid budget cuts.
The finance committee would love to have Mr. Manopella join us when we meet this summer. His financial and managerial skills would be a great addition to our group and an asset to the community.
Mostly the first time candidates spoke in generalizations and with not many details, which is understandable when one hasn’t yet served on the board.
However, at this point in time, with four employment contracts under negotiation, I prefer board of education members who have a few years of experience and who have a full understanding of the complexities of the issues.
Will Hornberger and Terry Hale certainly fit that bill. They are both passionate about the education of all our students while being cognizant of the financial limitations of the district’s residents. They have promised and delivered and made the tough choices after weighing all the factors.
We need them to continue the positive changes for the students and the community that are underway.
Vote for Hornberger and Hale on May 17!
Kathleen Darmstadt
Mineola
