Dear neighbors, friends, and family,
The past weeks remind us that contested elections are the very measure of democracy.
My campaign has revealed our common aspiration for a robust education which works within the Common Core, which works within our state-imposed tax cap, and within the fluctuations of unfunded state mandates. (State mandates are expenses Albany requires of our district but does not fund. As these unpredictable expenses rise, so do ours. )
For two centuries, public schools have been America’s noble experiment. Constantly reinvented, public education plays a crucial role in how we see ourselves and our future. Providing education for the poor and middle class in an emigrant nation, public education reduces disparities in wealth and transmits the knowledge, skills and habits necessary for a democratic way of life.
These are the people Mineola schools serve, and it for this reason we must not be satisfied with mere academic excellence, but with careful attention to every one of our children.
Our programs in sports and the arts are crucial for building strong adults; they also open opportunities and scholarships to students in the middle of our program. We have children graduating into the Ivy League. We have children who cannot hold a pen. We have children who do not own sneakers. We have a vested interest in all of them.
My opponent may purchase expensive ads. We may see the famous last-minute anonymous letter this weekend. Rather, I have run this campaign on the substance of my own words and those of friends. My family’s resources are devoted to the education of our children; I would not waste them on spectacle. You can expect this same careful attention to finances when I serve you on the board.
I would finally like to address the whisperings of a few which continue to entertain enemy-centered thinking, in which we all exist on either side of a divide between administration and silent rebellion. We have nothing to gain by characterizing each other or the people we have hired to administer and teach in our schools.
When our board moves on an item through careful consensus, this is the reflection of a fully functional democracy, not the workings of an imaginary wizard. It does us no good to consider ourselves – parent and child, taxpayer and employee – outside of the process of our own community. We are the agents for progress. Public schools must be accountable to citizens, but citizens must also be accountable to public schools. We ought to provide a model for our children of a well-educated citizenry which sees our destinies as intertwined.
Respectfully,
Patricia Cregan Navarra
Mineola
