Jericho Schools
Three candidates, including two incumbents, are running for two seats on the five-member Jericho School Board.
In an uncommon strategy, Claire Hochheiser, vice president of the Board, is running a “joint campaign” with newcomer Gina Levy. Hochheiser and Levy said they believe their experiences and goals complement each other.
“We are both, in different ways, seeing first-hand how the changes in education are affecting our children, teachers, parents and community,” Levy said. Voters may vote for up to two individual candidates; one vote for either Hochheiser or Levy will not count as a vote for both of them.
The third candidate is Barbara Krieger, past present of the Birchwood Civic Assocation who has lived in Jericho for 27 years. She has three children who attended Jericho schools. At the BCA monthly meeting April 29, Krieger said that not having children currently in the district was a plus for her independence as a Board member.
In her 15 years on the Board, including five years as president and two years as vice president, Krieger says she has advocated the introduction of science labs and foreign language in elementary schools, wide-ranging special education offerings, classroom technology, expansion of science and social science research programs, and elective courses in computer programing, debate and engineering.
Krieger obtained her bachelor’s degree at SUNY Albany and her MBA at NYU. She said her education has been put “to good use in analyzing budget proposals, challenging the district to provide innovative programs while simultaneously assuring fiscal responsibility.”
Hochheiser, a nine-year member of the Jericho Board, has been Director of Pupil Personnel Services in the Hauppauge School District for the past 12 years. She has also served as a special education tutor, teacher and curriculum associate in the Jericho School District.
Hochheiser has a bachelor’s degree in elementary and special education and a master’s of education in reading from the University of Arizona and a professional diploma in supervision and administration from Long Island University/C.W. Post.
“I have been the voice of the Jericho community for over 20 years,” she said. “I am a parent, teacher, administrator and have been a Jericho Board member for nine years. I have a close working relationship with parents, faculty and administration. All of my decisions are always made in the best interest of students.”
Teaming up with Hochheiser and making her first run for a Board seat is Gina Levy, a resident of the Jericho School District for 16 years. For 13 years, she has been active in PTA, having served on the Robert Seaman PTA’s Executive Board as Executive Vice President and PTA Co-President. She currently serves as recording secretary of the Jericho Joint PTA Council.
Levy says she would be the only board member with children currently in Jericho schools. She says she wants to deal with challenges facing the schools, “from Common Core, to social media and security.”
“I hope to serve as the eyes and ears of the parents whose children are being affected by these changes,” she said.
Syosset Schools
Four candidates, including three incumbents, are running for three positions on the nine-member Syosset Board of Education.
The election pits challenger Bill Weiner, who is calling for more transparency and public involvement in the Board meetings, against the incumbents who say they have been in the forefront of the fight for greater involvement of the community.
“I wanted to put the ‘public’ back into public education,” said April Neuendorf, who joined the Board in 2005. “We [members who joined the Board after 2005] started the change” [to make meetings more open and to allow public discussion of issues whether or not they were on the monthly agenda]. Neuendorf, along with Bill Weiner, was endorsed by the Birchwood Civic Association, but in a surprising statement, she declined to accept “an endorsement that excludes my fellow board members.”
A senior technology manager with Standard & Poor’s, Weiner has been active in PTA groups and the “No Mall Here” campaign. He is the chairman of the Syosset Board of Education Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance, co-chair of the Robbins Lane PTA Budget Committee and chairman of the South Woods PTA School and Community Committee.
In an interview, Neuendorf said she and her fellow incumbents “have the same philosophy, the same message. We all want more openness in Board meetings. I couldn’t, in good conscience, accept the implication that I was any more deserving of the endorsement than my other two Board members.”
Neuendorf, whose background is in finance and who is an office manager and bookkeeper with a local CPA firm, said she is the “only board member who does not have children in the district” and is able to represent that portion of the community in a similar family situation. She lives in Woodbury and is a life-long resident of the Syosset School District.
Michael Cohen, a physician who also joined the Board in 2005 and who has been serving for the past two years as Board President, said he “made it very clear” when he became president that public discussion of school issues would “not be limited to the agenda,” which had been the case in the past, and which was an ongoing source of controversy.
Cohen said that the newer Board members campaigned together for more openness and he said it was unfair of critics to deem a nine to nothing vote of the Board as automatically amounting to a “rubber stamping” of School Administration policies.
With a new Superintendent, Dr. Thomas Rogers, who replaces retired Superintendent Dr. Carole Hankin, Cohen suggested that the incumbents would be able to help make the transition as seamless as possible.
Cohen has three children, Syosset high school graduates, who are now in college, and a fourth in high school. He has lived in Syosset for 17 years. An M.D., he is a graduate of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
The third incumbent, Laura Schlesinger, joined the Board in 2011 and said she was part of the new leadership that called for “more transparency” in Board meetings. Schlesinger, who has two children attending high school, stands for “involvement of everybody” in the Board meetings, she said. Schlesinger has lived in Syosset for 15 years and was an elementary school teacher. She earned her master’s degree in elementary education from Hofstra.
Challenger Bill Weiner, who noted that he is the only candidate who has young children attending elementary school, said the Syosset Board has a history of showing “blind reverence for the Superintendent.” He said that the Board had “vague agenda items…provided minimal sharing of information with the community…and never disagreed” with the School Administration.
Commenting on one of the top educational issues, Weiner said he is concerned about the amount of “prep time” that students are given for various State-mandated tests. “The tests may be mandated,” he said, “but there’s no mandate for ‘prepping.’”
This year, the issue of “opting out” of tests has arisen, with parents choosing not to expose their children to the stress of test-taking.
Michael Cohen, Syosset Board president, said, “I fully respect a parent’s right to make a choice for the children. But I wonder whether the children themselves have been asked how they feel about not taking a test that their friends are taking.”
All candidates voiced support of the opting-out option, but said it should be left to the parents and students to make the final decision.
Voting for School Board members and the School Budget will take place on Tuesday, May 20.
Editors’ Note: The Syosset-Jericho Tribune does not endorse any candidates.
