Why should you vote to re-elect, me, Phil Heckler to the Hicksville School Board?
I hope it will be because you agree that I have the commitment, experience and desire to best serve our school children and our community. I am a 40 year resident of Hicksville, with two of three grandchildren currently attending Hicksville schools and two daughters who graduated from Hicksville High School. I am active in the community and am a member of the Hicksville Garden Civic Assoc. I have recently served on the Downtown Hicksville Revitalization committee and the Jerusalem Ave Traffic Study. I am interested in continuing to serve on the school board because of my desire to ensure our children receive a top- notch education and because I realize how closely the values of our homes are tied to the rating of our school district. Also I am concerned that our Long Island schools get their fair share of state aid to help alleviate property taxes.
I have worked for many years in managerial positions, but most importantly in situations where I had to work with diverse groups, bringing understanding and consensus. I was a platoon leader in Vietnam working successfully with men from many different backgrounds to achieve our common goals. Then for almost 30 years I worked for the New York State Dept. of Environmental Protection in various managerial positions. During my time there, I managed a staff of 400 employees and had responsibility for a $200 million operating budget. Through these years I worked with countless community groups with people of varied economic and ethnic backgrounds and learned to find common ground. I believe this experience has well served me so far as a member and current president of the Hicksville school board.
As my first term comes to an end I can reflect on the success of the Board of Education, where I am one of seven trustees. We have become a team that works together for common goals of improving education for our children in a cost effective manner. One of our first successful acts was to hire a strong new leader for the high school, Mr. Ray Williams. After acting as interim superintendent for about eight months we recently appointed Dr. Carl Bonuso as the permanent superintendent. Both Ray and Carl are very well liked and respected by the community. Working as a team with Dr. Bonuso, the board helped establish a collaborative atmosphere that is already paying off dividends. Morale is up, participation is infectious. Next year’s budget will include a modest 0.65% tax increase while adding several educational enhancements. For example, we added several programs designed to improve our high school graduation rate. At the other end of the spectrum we authorized SCOPE to begin a quality preK program on a pilot basis, at no cost to taxpayers. We are creating additional special education containment classes within the district, rather than sending them to BOCES, so that they may be better served in the least restrictive environment, in buildings with the general population.
But we still have many challenges that I believe our team can successfully address. We must continue to live within the 2% cap by continuing to find efficiencies and re-purpose existing resources so that we can continue to add programs that will benefit our children. The diversity of our community is one of our biggest assets, yet we must nurture those assets by helping students with limited English to thrive in our school. And we must develop a strategy to deal with the Governor’s evolving education reforms that so many see as counterproductive. I hope you will return me to serve another term as trustee.
—Phil Heckler
