The Port Washington school district’s $155 million budget and three members of the Board of Education will be up for a vote on Tuesday.
The three members are Vice President Nora Johnson, Larry Greenstein and Elizabeth Weisburd. The three are unopposed in their re-election bids.
Voting will be held at Carrie Palmer Weber Middle School in Port Washington from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The proposed budget’s $155 million total is a 2.92 percent increase from the current budget. The tax levy for the 2018-19 school year will increase by $4.19 million, or 3.15 percent.
In addition to serving as vice president, Johnson is a member of the Policy and Personnel Committee. She has served on the board since 2012.
Johnson said she first ran for the position because she held leadership positions in several other local organizations including the Home and School Association, the Community Scholarship Fund and Relay for Life.
She said she decided to run again because she enjoyed the experience so much.
“We have an excellent board in the sense that we’re cohesive and work well together,” she said. “I feel like I can continue to make a contribution to the community that I love … I get a lot of satisfaction from the learning about the educational system and using my legal and interpersonal skills.”
For her upcoming term, Johnson said she is looking forward to continuing her work with the Diversity Committee, which she co-chairs.
“We live in a community that is very diverse culturally, ethically and economically,” she said. “We’re working with faculty and with interested parents to create an even more welcoming environment where every student can feel comfortable and have the best education possible.”
Greenstein serves on the Curriculum Committee and has been a member of the board since 2004. He previously served as the president of a special education parent-teacher association, which he said inspired him to advocate for students at the margins.
“I thought at that point, the board really needed a voice for people on the edges,” he said of his decision to run for the board 14 years ago. “The kids who were outliers were sort of being left behind.”
His children have graduated from the district and Greenstein said that this gives him a unique perspective of residents who support the schools through taxes but do not have school-age children. He also said he wants to advocate for students who might be otherwise forgotten, which is why he said the proudest accomplishment of his tenure was overhauling the district’s special education program.
“The fact that we’ve gone from being sort of notorious in special ed to being sought after … and having one of the best programs in the state … that was big,” he said.
Weisburd is finishing her first term. She serves on the Curriculum Committee with Greenstein and on the Budget and Facilities Committee and said she was crucially involved in the latter in getting this year’s budget through.
“I think I was pretty instrumental in helping this budget come in,” she said.
Her goal with the Curriculum Committee is to maintain the district’s lofty standards.
“I wanted to make sure that we continue to offer the quality of education here in Port Washington that we’ve offered as long as I’ve been here, and that’s a very, very long time,” she said.
