Christine Napolitano was elected president of the Mineola Board of Education and William Hornberger vice president in a unanimous vote of the four school board members present at last Friday night’s reorganization meeting.
“I’m very honored to serve as president this year,” Napolitano said after the meeting. “I’m looking forward to a productive year, hoping we can put things behind us this year.”
Those “things” Napolitano, a three-year-veteran of the board, alluded to are the contentious issues about consolidation of elementary schools in the district.
Napolitano, whose daughter will be a senior in the high school this fall, had long been active in the district PTA before becoming a board member.
Napolitano was nominated by Hornberger to fill the top board post that had been held by Terence Hale.
Hale and Hornberger won re-election to their respective seats on the board in June with both men each receiving more than 1,600 votes each in an election that was seen by many voters in the district as a referendum on the consolidation plan. Both incumbents made support of the consolidation plan the primary issue in their respective campaigns against challengers Joseph Manopella and Veronica Levitan, who expressed reservations about consolidation plan.
Napolitano had joined Hale and Hornberger to form the board majority that kept the plan on track.
Irene Parrino seconded Napolitano’s nomination for board president. Parrino had been aligned with John McGrath, the veteran board member who had consistently voiced his opposition to two bond issues that presented alternative consolidation plans. Both were defeated by large margins.
The school board budget that easily passed in the May 17 vote included proposed capital improvement expenditures of $2.6 million for renovations to the Hampton Street and Meadow Drive Schools to make them the district’s schools for grades K through 2.
That is part of the “default” consolidation plan adopted by the board – with McGrath and Parrino opposing it – that included the controversial lease of the Cross Street School to the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove and the migration of fifth graders to the middle school and eighth graders to the high school, both of which had drawn opposition from some parents.
McGrath has made conciliatory comments in the wake of the election results. He supported a contract extension for Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler, saying he deserved a chance to implement the school consolidation plan based on voters’ support of the budget.
McGrath was absent from the Friday night meeting. Napolitano said he had expressed his regrets at not being able to attend.
He could not be reached for comment on Napolitano’s election as school board president.
In other action at the meeting, the board approved a technology agreement with Nassau BOCES that would enable the school district to replace obsolete computer equipment at the administration building in the Willis Avenue School, the Mineola High School and Middle School, and the Hampton Street. Napolitano was authorized to sign the agreements.
Nagler said he had confirmed a report in the Williston Times with state Sen. Jack Martins’ office that a $150,000 state grant for the district to construct new science labs in the high school and middle school had been restored.
Martins had succeeded in pushing for restoration of that grant among $4.7 million in grants in the 7th Senate District that had been withdrawn by state Senate Democrats after Craig Johnson lost his seat to Martins in the November election. That money was part of approximately $10 million in grant commitments Johnson had made to school districts, municipalities and fire departments in the district.
Nagler said he waiting to see whether the money was earmarked for reimbursement on the science lab projects or could be applied to new projects.
Nagler also unveiled a new district policy for delinquent student lunch accounts. He said under the new policy, students would be permitted to charge up $10 on their lunch accounts. But if the accounts remained unpaid, students would be restricted to receiving a medal consisting of a fruit, milk, vegetable and a cheese sandwich until the account is cleared up.
The change was prompted by students in the district being collectively $4,000 in arears at the end of the recent school year, according to Nagler.
He said the district would withhold textbooks from the students until the accounts are settled, with principals from the respective schools following up on the accounts.
“The accounts are not going to be wiped clean,” Nagler said.
