Christine Napolitano had been involved with the Mineola PTA for more than 16 years when she first decided to run for a position on the Mineola Board of Education in 2009.
“I thought it was time to either put up or shut up. I started to run, really not knowing what was happening, but glad to be a part of what was going on,” Napolitano said.
Last month, Napolitano, who won her trustee race in 2009 and has continued to serve since then, was honored by the Town of North Hempstead for service with both the Mineola school board and the PTA as a member of the 2013 May W. Newburger Women’s Roll of Honor.
Napolitano said decision to get involved with schools was an easy one.
“You’re talking about children. There’s nothing more important you can talk about,” she said.
She said she took a particular interest in how the school system because she had attended Catholic schools while growing up in Queens. A government major at St. John’s University, Napolitano said she always had a curiosity about how local government worked.
As a PTA member at the Cross Street School and Mineola High School, Napolitano worked with administrators, faculty, and custodians, regularly discussing developments at the two schools. And when the youngest of her three daughters was in her sophomore year in high school, Napolitano decided to run for a school board seat.
Napolitano was elected to the Mineola board as the school district was contemplating a major consolidation that involved closing school buildings in response to a diminished student population as well as lawsuits involving district administrators, including former school district superintendent Lorenzo Licopoli.
“I came on the board while we were making those decisions. Obviously this was a team effort led by Dr. Nagler,” Napolitano said, referring to Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler. “Luckily I was on the board with two members who shared the vision of what we needed to do.”
Those two members are current board President Will Hornberger and Vice President Terence Hale, who supported the concept of reconfiguration backed by Nagler.
A Citizens Committee on Configuration was formed of residents, school administrators and teachers which proposed alternative plans. Through two years of often heated discussions and two referendums that still left the issue unresolved, a plan was eventually determined by a divided board, with former board Trustee John McGrath and Trustee Irene Parrino resisting the move to shutter two schools.
Ultimately, the school board elected to shutter the Cross Street School in Williston Park and lease it to the Solomon Schechter Day School. Leasing to a private Jewish school proved to be another point of controversy in the process. The second phase of the consolidation plan, abandoning the use of the Willis Avenue School for early elementary grade classes, was implemented while Napolitano was board president last year and decisions were also made about moving eighth graders into the high school and fifth graders into middle school.
“When you start talking about closing buildings, that’s probably that hardest decision you’ll every make as a school board,” Napolitano said. “It was a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of upset stomachs. But I was very lucky to be on the board with people who had the courage to see it through.”
She said she expected resolution of the district consolidation issue was going to be difficult, but said it was a tougher process to go through than she anticipated. She describes it as a “unique” situation that she hopes will never recur.
Napolitano said she considers her fellow school board members part of the honor given her by the town.
“I was extremely surprised and honored. It was shared by the other board members who made those tough decisions with me,” she said.
Professionally she works as a certified health and fitness professional.
Apart from her work in the school district, Napolitano is involved with her husband, Thomas, a lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department, in supporting a foundation started by the family of Michael Cawley, a firefighter from her husband’s Queens firehouse who died as a first responder on September 11.
“Every year since that tragic event, we hold a very big fundraiser,” she said.
The Cawley family started foundation with money raised goes to support and Upstate camp for disabled children where the late firefighter worked. The foundation also set up a scholarship at his alumnus, Malloy High School to enable children of firefighters to attend the high school. This year, she said the Cawley Foundation also donated money to firemen whose homes were affected by Hurricane Sandy.
