Former New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school board Trustee Patricia Rudd will have to run a contested race to get back on the board.
Shamini Sivalingam of New Hyde Park filed a petition Monday to run for the seat Trustee Joan Romagnoli is vacating at the end of her term.
The parent of two Manor Oaks School students, Sivalingam said she wants to bridge what she sees as a disconnect between the district community and the school board and administration.
She said she would bring a new, “solution-based” perspective to the board and increase parent involvement to find ways to fund new programs outside of budget restrictions, as she did with her recent proposal for parent-funded after-school enrichment programs.
”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.
A native of Malaysia who moved to the U.S. in 2000, Sivalingam said she would represent the district’s increased racial diversity and engage more parents of minority ethnic backgrounds.
Rudd served on the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school board for 15 years until she moved to Michigan for work in 2014. She returned about a year ago, she said last week.
She said she is glad to see interest in the open seat, as she has also noticed declining parent involvement. But her experience “speaks for itself,” she said.
“… I think at this point in the game, we really need someone with experience, especially since Joan (Romagnoli) is stepping down.”
Rudd was active with the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association and was involved with education lobbying efforts in Albany and Washington, D.C., she said.
Her three children went to New Hyde Park-Garden City Park schools, and her daughter is a part-time physical education teacher in the district, she said.
Rudd said last week that she is concerned about “big changes” in the administration of education. She would like to see the federal government move away from the Common Core standards and return control to local school districts, she said.
Sivalingam said she thinks the school board should more proactively address the Common Core standards, which she thinks have educational value but have been hampered by a bungled rollout.
“I think you need to have a benchmark of some sort to be able to administer that, because otherwise you’re going to have such disparity between people in New Hyde Park and Manhasset, or even between children in New York and Califorinia, Minnesota, whatever it is,” she said.
Current school board President Ernest Gentile and Trustee Jennifer Kerrane are running unopposed for re-election.
Kerrane is a career educator and has lived in New Hyde Park for the past three years. She is seeking a second term following her 2013 victory over James Reddan, who was later appointed to replace Rudd after she resigned in 2014.
In an email, she said she thinks the school board has succeeded in engaging the community and keeping residents informed about issues facing the district.
She would like to encourage residents to more actively participate in district affairs and engage their state and federal representatives about the effects of governmentally imposed “unfunded mandates,” she said.
“Whether or not residents have school-aged children, it is important for them to get involved,” Kerrane said in an email. “We all must work together to keep the focus of education on the children and keep the increase of homeowners taxes at a minimum.”
Efforts to reach Gentile was unavailing.
New Hyde Park-Garden City Park residents will vote for the three school board seats and the district’s 2016-2016 budget on May 17.
