Williston Park resident Andrew Apicos is challenging Herricks school board Trustee Juleigh Chin for her seat, giving the one-term incumbent her first contested election.
But Chin, of Manhasset Hills, said she will run her campaign for a second three-year term as she would if she were unopposed.
“I will continue to speak to as many people and organizations as possible, but I’m not really doing anything different than what I would normally do anyway,” she said. “I really think that who I am as a person and who I’ve been … already supports my being on the board.”
The Herricks school district did not release Apicos’ contact information, and he did not respond to a request for comment made through the district.
But publicly available information shows he lives in Williston Park and teaches biology at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington.
Chin was elected to the Herricks school board in 2013, running unopposed to replace outgoing Trustee Sanjay Jain.
She said she wants to continue the cohesion the current school board has achieved, and is proud of how the board has overseen changes in the district’s administration, including the hiring of Superintendent Fino Celano, new assistant superintendents and administrators within Herricks’ schools.
“I think that we are recreating a culture of learning that is just far exceeds what we could have hoped for in the past,” Chin said.
She said she is also proud of the facilities improvements the district has undertaken and how it has dealt with changing state standards.
Herricks schools are in a good place, she said, but she wants to continue working with the board to take them to “the next level.”
“I don’t want to see us be stagnant,” Chin said. “I don’t want us to move back, obviously. I want to see us succeed by doing the best that we can — not by being the best, necessarily, but by doing the best that we can.”
Chin has lived in Manhasset Hills since 2005 and has two children in Herricks schools.
She works as a volunteer coordinator for Northwell Health and previously managed the gift shop at Long Island Jewish Medical Center for more than four years.
She also ran a tutoring business in Queens from 1996 to 2000 and worked as a teacher’s aid in the Mineola school district for three years.
Before her election to the school board, Chin was the vice president of the Herricks Council of PTAs and twice president of the Denton Avenue School PTA.
Herricks district residents will cast ballots in the school board race and for the 2016-2017 district budget on May 17.
