Great Neck resident Chris Huang, who last week filed a petition to run for the Great Neck Board of Education, said on Saturday he was running to make sure Great Neck ranked above other Long Island school districts.
“A couple of years ago, we were way ahead of many other high schools,” Huang said in an interview with the Great Neck News. “Over the years we have slipped behind.”
Huang pointed to the latest U.S. News and World Report ranking of high schools in the state and country, which put Great Neck South High School behind Jericho High School and Manhasset Secondary School.
“Jericho, in the past five or 10 years, has surpassed Great Neck,” he said.
Huang said, if elected to the board, he would task the school’s administration to make sure the Great Neck’s school were ranked higher in future years.
“If we’re slipping, I want to know why,” Huang said. “And if you can’t do that job I want a different person to do it.”
Huang will be competing against Lawrence Gross, vice president of the board of education, and board member and policy chair Susan Healy for two open seats on the board.
The election will take place on Tuesday, May 20.
Huang said, if elected, he would seek to have the administration begin weighing student’s advanced placement test scores when calculating their GPA.
Huang said he was part of a committee of parents in the school district, which asked Great Neck Superintendent of Schools Thomas Dolan to complete a survey of all the schools in Nassau County that weigh student’s AP scores.
“To my absolute dismay I found out that Great Neck is the only high school [in Nassau County] that did not weigh AP grading,” Huang said.
Great Neck’s omissions of students’ AP scores, Huang said, put them at a disadvantage when applying to colleges.
“I can feel confident saying that 85-90 percent of colleges do not have the resources to unweight your averages,” he said.
When asked for a comment, Dolan said “it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the races for the board of education.”
Huang said he was born in Taiwan and at the age of 12 moved to Brazil. He later moved to the United States to study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton, where he got a Ph.D in mechanical aerospace engineering. He said also has a masters of business administration degree from C.W. Post.
Huang said he currently works as a business analyst at OpenLink Finanical in Uniondale.
He said he moved to Great Neck more than 25 years ago and now has two children. His son is a junior at Berklee College and his daughter is a sophomore at Great Neck South High School.
Huang said outside of working with the committee on AP grading, he does not have any experience in education.
In an interview with Great Neck News last week, Healy said she hopes district voters keep her experience and that of Gross in mind when going to the polls.
“I would like everyone to know that I really think that as we said at every board meeting that these are challenging times,” she said. “I think that experience counts for something.”
Huang said although experience counts, it does not guarantee the trustees will continue to do a good job.
“If you look at your experience and this is the results we’re getting, I’m sorry your experience did not pay off,” he said.
Even if Huang does not get the opportunity to serve on the board, he said he hopes his challenge will motivate the board to improve their performance.
“I’m here to win,” he said. “But if I don’t, I want the current trustees to do a better job.”
Voting will take place on Tuesday, May 20 from 7 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. at E.M. Baker Elementary School, located at 69 Baker Hill Road and Great Neck South High School, located at 341 Lakeville Road.
The election will also include a vote on the district’s $214 million budget, which calls for a 1.97 percent increase in the tax levy.
Residents will also vote on the Great Neck Public Library’s $9.6 million budget, which calls for a 1.19 percent increase in the tax levy and was adopted by the library’s board of trustees in early April.
The results will be announced at 10:30 p.m. at the Phipps Administration Building, located at 345 Lakeville Road.
