Both candidates vying for a single trustee position on the Manhasset Board of Education said during a debate on Wednesday that they could support a school budget that exceeded the state’s 2 percent tax cap under certain circumstances.
Trustee Patricia Aitken and School Community Association member Marirose Merola said they would do all they could to preserve Manhasset’s quality of education while contending with employee pensions and health-care benefits that are set by the state, not the district.
“If these are not numbers we can control and they’re numbers that continue to increase, we just have to deal with it,” said Aitken, who is seeking her fourth two-year term in the May 20 election.
Aitken and Merola each answered questions from residents as part of a two-hour forum hosted by the Port Washington-Manhasset chapter of the League of Women Voters at the Manhasset Public Library.
Aitken, a Manhasset resident of 16 years whose three children have graduated from the Manhasset School District, called pension and benefit contributions the most significant issue facing the district.
Though district officials have said low pension and benefit costs for the 2014-15 year have helped keep Manhasset’s $87.9 million budget within the tax cap, Aitken said it was a key factor in the board seeking a supermajority vote last year.
“What we missed out on was to what extent our community was still suffering after the economy went bad,” she said. “It’s easy to say old folks and retirees say the taxes are too high, but we heard from a lot of younger parents, and it made it very difficult to make those very hard decisions.”
Merola, whose recent work on Manhasset’s Citizens Education Committee has included lobbying state lawmakers on school district issues, said attempts at pension and benefit reform in the Legislature have been unsuccessful in the past.
“There is concern because I don’t think anyone’s going to put it on floor of the state Legislature,” she said.
Merola, a 14-year Manhasset resident who teaches special education at Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, said she would bring a fresh perspective to the board if elected and described herself as a “creative problem-solver” who can “see solutions where others see obstacles.”
“I offer fresh ideas because I have a different background from the rest of the board,” she said. “I don’t always drink the Kool Aid.”
Merola, a former information technology specialist, suggested Manhasset develop better working relationships with neighboring school districts to find unique ways of cutting costs and generating revenues in the tax-cap era.
“I don’t necessarily believe in consolidation, but we need to look at other ways to collaborate in living under the tax cap,” Merola said.
When asked about a potential conflict of interest arising in serving as a school board member in Manhasset but as a teacher in another district, Merola said she would be able to provide a comparative analysis of how each district operates.
She also balked at the suggestion that she would favor the economic interests of Manhasset’s teacher’s union over those of taxpayers during future contract negotiations.
“At the end of the day, I’m a taxpayer too,” she said.
Prior to her election to the board, Aitken served the district’s Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance, an organization that serves as a liaison between the board of education and the community as it pertains to the district’s budget.
She said that even though Manhasset’s 2013-14 budget required two votes to pass, she is proud of the “firm fiscal foundation for where we are today.”
“There’s something to history and continuity as things get difficult,” she said.
If elected to a fourth term, Aitken said she look at how Manhasset’s infrastructure could be better utilized for educational initiatives.
One of the key areas of district improvement, she said, would come from Manhasset’s forthcoming capital plan, which facilities committees comprised of educators, residents and district administrators are currently devising.
“It’s important to get people into our buildings and see our schools,” she said. “That’s what’s happening and we’ll hear from them before the year ends.”
Merola said the community approval capital bond to afford districtwide facilities upgrades would be crucial toward those improvements coming to fruition, as the district would likely have to breach the tax cap if such projects were put forth in Manhasset’s annual budget.
But her primary focus if elected, she said, would be to help the board analyze its course offerings “to make sure they are current and competitive.”
When asked for their opinions on the Common Core curriculum standards, Merola said she supported many of the academic aspects of the program but said the rollout has so far been weak.
She said that because the state waited so long to release the curriculum modules, school districts had to write their lesson plans just before the start of the school year.
“It created this kind of domino effect,” Merola said. “They also told us we’d be able to go deeper into topics, but we’ve been teaching a new lesson a day.”
Aitken said Manhasset has worked to soften the impact of the rollout by implementing programs and shaping its curriculum to begin to conform to the Common Core standards that will soon be required.
But because of the sudden shift in how curriculum will be taught, Aitken said math students – and even some teachers – may struggle to adapt to different methods of thinking.
“If you’re changing the way you teach math, then you have to learn it first yourself,” she said. “And if you have to change the way you learn math, you have to get the module to know what you’re teaching.”
