—By Mary Goodfellow
On Monday, May 4, I attended the Meet the Candidates Night at Mineola High School. I was expecting a professional forum where the potential candidates would state their views on specific topics. In my opinion, I witnessed the ugliest and most unethical display of character by Brian Widman and Christine Napolitano. I was shocked and dismayed by the nasty look on Ms. Napolitano’s face several times when Joy Renner and Mark Swensen spoke, but her partner, Widman, went even lower.
He spoke about a young child, who had the courage to speak at a board meeting in March. He spoke about my 11-year-old daughter, Haley. She spoke of her disapproval with the Common Core Curriculum and standardized testing. She spoke of how the testing, caused her anxiety and why she would not participate. It took a lot of courage for her to do this.
Widman stated that Haley wasn’t worried about anxiety when she spoke at the meeting, insinuating that the state assessments shouldn’t have caused her such stress. Obviously, Mr. Widman is not aware of the “Save Public Education” movement. There have been numerous children who have spoken up against the testing. Look on YouTube.
My daughter was proud to take a stand for what she believes in. How can Mr. Widman compare a two-minute, child-created speech to 18 hours of developmentally inappropriate, no value testing? Do you feel proud of yourself? Do you really feel that a parent and a child speaking at meeting, should be ridiculed at Meet the Candidate Night? Is that the respect you have for myself, a taxpayer?
Is this the message you want to send to Mineola parents? Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that parents voices were important in Mineola. I was under the impression, that if we spoke, and if our children spoke, we would at least be shown respect. I was not shown that at the meeting, and Monday, you went too far Mr. Widman. You crossed the line to make it personal. You spoke about my daughter. How dare you. How dare you say that people who opt their children out of testing are using them as pawns?
All she did was speak from her heart. All I heard from Napalitano and Widman was how wonderful they are for attending the board meetings, and how we should vote for them because they’ve been there so long. I’m sorry, that is not enough for me to vote for anyone. I vote for someone with integrity and values.
