Incumbent Herricks Board of Education Trustees Henry Zanetti and James Gounaris responded to criticism from challenger Bhajan Ratra of the board’s proposed budget increase and alleged lack of transparency.
Voters will cast absentee ballots in the June 9 election due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ratra is challenging Zanetti, and Tarantej S. Arora is running against Gounaris.
Zanetti, a Williston Park resident who served on the Herricks PTA for over a decade, was elected to the board in 2017. He is now running for his second term.
Gounaris, a Manhasset Hills resident, was president of the board from 2013 to 2015. He is now running for his fourth term on the board.
Ratra is an adjunct professor of mathematics at Baruch College and SUNY Farmingdale. He is a panel member on the content advisory and bias review committees of New York State Teaching Certification Examination and has served in the past on the standards setting committee for the NYS Regents exams.
He aims to bring more transparency and accountability, as well as his background in education, to the board.
Arora has a background in architecture, construction management and business administration. He moved into the Herricks district eight years ago, and said that he chose the area due to the great reviews of its school system and the welcoming community.
Arora stressed that he believes the district needs to be proactive rather than reactive, and provide more structural support for students in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also plans to look at ways for the district to tighten its spending, if elected to the board.
Both Zanetti and Gounaris emphasized that they want to keep up the momentum that the current board has built.
Ratra said that the incumbents are “good people,” but that they do not have backgrounds in education. He stressed that he has been in the education field for 20 years.
Zanetti responded that being a member of the board does not require a background in education.
“We have people who are capable and intelligent, and who have long backgrounds in Herricks as parents, on the PTA and in other types of activities,” he said. “What we have is a great administration and great teachers, and if we need information or advice from teachers, we can get it in-house. It doesn’t have to be a teacher on the board, there’s nothing that makes that a particularly special talent.”
He said that the board has sufficient experience and education among its five members.
“I worked 35 years in federal government and I know everything there is to know about large organizations and how they run, and I’ve taken more management courses than [Ratra] ever could have in four years of college,” Zanetti added. “I’d be happy to compare resumes with him.”
Ratra said that the board needs to work with families in the community to come up with a plan for the fall. He added that when he attended the board’s March 7 meeting and asked how the board was preparing for a potential school shutdown, the board did not have a plan, which he said he found concerning.
Gounaris said that Ratra’s allegation is “categorically false.”
“We were working on what we thought was going to be an inevitable shutdown, but had no idea of the timing by the governor,” he said. “Every school district on Long Island was caught by surprise when the governor announced everyone was closing. I would venture to say every district, no matter how they prepared, was not prepared for the shutdown.”
“We’re a smaller kind of district and we were still able to quickly react to what was going on, and have those plans continue to evolve as the state continued to give us different guidance every single day,” he added.
“We had to play that by ear,” said Zanetti.
Most schools were still open at that time, and the district was waiting for the government to take action, he explained.
“If you do it too soon you’re going to get criticized, if you do it too late you’re going to get criticized,” he commented.
Furthermore, the 2.5 percent budget increase proposed by the board will place a burden on the taxpayer, according to Ratra.
Zanetti and Gounaris explained that contractual obligations, such as raises for teachers and health care contributions mandated by the state, account for about $1.8 million of the approximately $3 million increase. Another $800,000 to $900,000 will be used to replace the entire wide area network, which they say has long been a complaint from students, teachers and parents.
They said that it was supposed to happen two or three years ago, but the grant from the state did not come through. The board finally decided to put it in the budget rather than wait for the state funding, which would be to the detriment of students and teachers, they explained.
Ratra added that he believes the board needs to provide a detailed breakdown of the budget proposal to the community, which he said has not happened in the past.
“Something is not working, because there is no transparency,” he said.
Gounaris pointed to the fact that the public is welcome to attend board meetings and budget hearings, and that the budget is available on the website. Furthermore, he said, residents can email the board at boardofeducation@herricks.org if they have a specific question or concern.
“We are about as transparent as we can be,” said Zanetti. “We go through the budget process, it’s presented four or five times throughout the year, it’s presented at open board meetings which people can attend or now listen in online.”
“We are obligated to listen but a bunch of meetings are not really for back and forth debate,” he added.
