Is it possible to disenfranchise affluent and well-educated voters? I suspect it is. So, Great Neck, what will it take to support the intellectual growth of our community? I ask because we really need to start paying attention.
In 1982 when a current member of the Great Neck Board of Education first took their seat, the district’s budget was nearly $47 million. In 1992 when the current president of the Great Neck Board of Education first took their seat, the district’s budget was nearly $86 million. Today it is approximately $250 million. While I certainly support the continuation of a healthy school budget, I am adamantly opposed to the power these individuals wield, power that has been carelessly handled with a healthy dose of communal neglect. In fact, this community’s blind trust has enabled the same two people to play an outsized role in taxing Great Neck to the tune of $5,000,000,000 during their time on the board. That’s right. The cumulative spend during their tenure has caused this community to be taxed $5 billion.
Did I pique your interest yet?
Now I fully anticipate that just like the last time I called out members of the school board for their ornery ways and inexpert approach to financial oversight and management, the president of the Board of Education will probably issue yet another communication stating that the district is under attack. Well, to save some time, let me clarify a point for you. The district is not under attack. Rather it is under review. If you must put a label on my approach, please consider it to be a communal audit. To be clear, just as I stated in my last letter, I am an enthusiastic supporter of our school system. I continue to appreciate that our children have enormous resources at their disposal, funded by our tax dollars and presented in real time by well-meaning educators. However, I lack the level of blind trust and silent observation that has kept these individuals in office for way too long.
When the school board president issued their “the district is under attack” message, it seemed a rather simple communication. However, a thoughtful reading suggests that the school board’s president took the following position: No one has the right to challenge, question or concern themselves with the power grab that has developed over many decades and no one should concern themselves with matters involving the capacity of individual school board members.
One can claim, as incumbent candidates suffering from injured pride often do, that folks like me just don’t understand. And while I am no novice, I am sure that 40 years in office has made these sitting board members experts in the district’s institutional history, a history they themselves have created. But if this board had the requisite financial skill to govern, it would also understand that some people in this community are aware of the fact that their management of district finances is best defined as a material weakness.
While I can’t dissect the many layers of insecurities that exist among individual board members, I can certainly appreciate that the two incumbent members, up for re-election in just a few short months, take issue with my calling them out for being inadequate for this moment. So, to make amends, I will share something I find to be extraordinary about them. In my view, it is extraordinary that these two board members have NEVER faced a challenger in the 30- to 40-year span they have served. It is also extraordinary that over the past 10 election cycles when they have run unopposed, they have ONLY secured approximately 20,000 votes, cumulatively. What’s more extraordinary is that their cumulative vote count represents less than 10,000 unique individuals, over many decades. And forgive me for the overuse of the word, but it’s also extraordinary that those entrusted to tax and spend more than $5 billion have been granted enormous power by only 4 percent of the community (just analyze the election results for yourself).
Pervasive apathy is one ill that has afflicted Great Neck, but there are others, too. These board members have gone out of their way to design a system that explicitly protects incumbents. They have unilaterally implemented a system that prevents the top vote-getters from securing seats on the school board. Under the current system, which only changed a handful of years back when residents in the district started getting a bit more vocal, a potential candidate is now forced to declare which incumbent they intend to run against (rather than a system that allows voters to select the top vote-getting candidates, as it once did). Because of this change, the school board has now become a political body and its members are politicians. Perhaps in the next election, Great Neck will organize an effort to prevent these politicians from getting more stale by mandating term limits and voting them out of office.
Re-elections for these politicians now appear to be more important than serving the best interests of our children and the future of the district, because their self-preservation takes center stage. As these folks employ strategies of intimidation and unvarnished interference in community engagement, continued criticism of them is more than appropriate. Given their decisions, one might wonder if these incumbents have blurred other lines and inadvertently engaged district employees in their re-election efforts. Regardless, based on their tactics, it is hard to argue that these elections are about our children, particularly when those who continue to sit at the table haven’t had a child in the district for decades.
The school board claims transparency, yet requires tax-paying members of the community to file Freedom of Information Law requests to obtain budget trends and analysis and financial projections. The school board claims transparency, yet they fail to publicly disseminate information about how a member of the community can run for a seat on “their” board. (By the way, that process is now open.) The school board claims transparency, yet they continue to dodge public engagement by referring to New York state’s temporary suspension of the open meetings law requirements. In effect, they have created a Rube Goldberg machine approach to transparency, that is, an intentionally delightful effort to waste time and energy and complicate the end result. One thing remains clear: change is necessary.
Zoom board meetings have been great as residents have had the opportunity to look into the eyes of members of the school board and concentrate on their words. That said, the board needs to stop running these meetings like a family dinner. Perhaps I was the only one who noticed that at the last meeting on Feb. 24, one of the long-serving members who is up for re-election spent the entire meeting muted. I guess the minutes of that meeting will reflect that that individual chose to abstain from every vote cast, including those on bullying, public shaming of children, revisions to the district-wide safety plan or the myriad of other issues voted on, since their voice couldn’t be heard and their opinion couldn’t be shared. I guess technology really does get the best of us sometimes.
Questioning the decisions of those who have comfortably sailed into office term after term, unopposed, is not an attack on the school district, as the president of board suggested after my last letter. It is the responsible thing to do. Few appreciate what we take for granted here, yet the implications for Great Neck’s collective indifference are real. Remember, the future of the district will be on the next ballot.
Michael S. Glickman
Great Neck
