Two New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school board members are making unopposed bids for re-election this year.
Vice President Tara Notine and Trustee James Reddan were the only two candidates who filed petitions to run for their seats by Monday’s deadline, school district officials said.
Reddan, a lifelong Garden City Park resident, was appointed to the board in October 2014 after Patricia Rudd, then the board’s vice president, resigned to move to Michigan. He won an unopposed bid in 2015 to finish the term.
Now seeking his first full three-year term, Reddan said he wants to help the district through a transition period as Jennifer Morrison takes over as the district’s superintendent. Robert Katulak, the current superintendent, will retire at the end of the school year in June.
“I’d like to stay on board to see that through,” Reddan said.
Reddan, who works as an engineer for the Town of Hempstead, previously lost a 2013 race to Jennifer Kerrane, the current school board president. Rudd returned to the district and was again elected to the board last year.
Reddan has also served since 2016 as a district representative to the Sewanhaka Central High School District school board, alongside Trustee David Del Santo. New Hyde Park-Garden City Park is one of four elementary school districts that feed into the Sewanhaka district.
Reddan said he wants to expand the district’s use of iPads to better prepare students for Sewanhaka high schools, which have begun distributing the tablet computers to every student.
Every sixth-grade classroom in New Hyde Park-Garden City Park schools currently has five iPads, but Reddan wants every sixth-grader to have a device and to put five tablets in fifth-grade classrooms, he said.
“If we can lessen the anxiety we should, and getting them used to the iPads would do that, or help do that,” Reddan said.
Notine, a New Hyde Park resident, was first elected to the board in 2013 to fill the seat that former Trustee Alan Cooper had left. She won her first full term in 2014.
Notine has served as the board’s vice president since July 2016. She previously served as a class mother at the Manor Oaks School and in the Manor Oaks PTA.
Notine did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment on her re-election bid.
District residents will vote for the two school board seats; budgets for the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park and Sewanhaka school districts; the Hillside Public Library budget; and a proposition to spend about $3 million from capital reserve funds on May 16 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Michael J. Tully Park in New Hyde Park.
