Residents voted on Tuesday, May 19, to pass the budget and elect two new members to the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Board of Education. Todd E. Cronin and Laurie G. Kowalsky are the new board members who will be inducted into office at the first meeting in July.
The proposed budget for 2015-16 of $55,409,484 passed with 852 to 338 votes, a 72 percent passing rate. It is the lowest expenditure budget increase in at least 16 years. The budget maintains all current programs and class size, while adding new programs, such as college level engineering, robotics, English as a new language enhancements, a middle school play, high school summer school, a crew team and new athletic equipment for student safety.
The proposition to use capital reserve funds passed with a vote of 871 to 282, a 76 percent passing rate. It will allow the district to spend no more than $2,438,385 for building improvement projects, and other needed purchases. Since the district has the money saved, it does not have to go out and borrow money for the projects and then pay interest on a loan.
The library budget of $1,841,811 passed with a vote of 877 to 239, a 79 percent passing rate.
Residents cast votes for two out of four candidates for four-year terms on the board.
Todd E. Cronin received a total of 678 votes, of which 159 were absentee ballots and six were affidavits.
Laurie G. Kowalsky received a total of 685 votes, of which 156 were absentee ballots and seven were affidavits.
Incumbent Maryann Santos received 599 votes, of which 129 were absentee ballots and nine were affidavits.
David Asher received 356 votes, of which 76 were absentee ballots and four were affidavits. [Interestingly, more people voted in absentia than voted in person].
The results mean that Santos will leave the board at the end of June, as will Stephen Zbodula, who opted not to run for office again.
Frank Murdock received 881 votes, of which 199 were absentee ballots and six were affidavits. The votes confirmed his five-year term on the OB-EN Library board.
Even though a great number of people chose to vote by absentee ballot, there was still a lot of activity at the polling location. Around 5 p.m. was a great time to be voting for (or against) the Oyster Bay-East Norwich School District budget. Parents were coming in with their kids. Regular volunteers were waiting by the voting machines. The Nassau County election books were open and ready for signing in.
Former board member Dolores Greico was the election clerk. Grace Gowe, a familiar face at the elections, was working there, too. Another familiar face was that of retired kindergarten teacher Ada Frischer. For her, retiring was an opportunity to keep on doing interesting things, including volunteering at Tilles Center and at the Nassau County Museum. She also leads an opera study group at the Great Neck Senior Center.
The children happily joined their parents as they came to the foyer of the Howard Imhof Gymnasium. Graduate Gregory Druhak said, walking out of the gym after voting and seeing the stark letters “Howard E. Imhof” reminded him of the time spent with the actual man in his office and felt like a reference to the movie Back to the Future.
He said that in addition to voting, he was there for what he calls “cupcake arbitrage” because the bake sale usually had better values than the supermarket. But, at that late hour, he found no cupcakes, only a table offering health foods and a gym full of exciting science projects.
It still wasn’t time for dinner and families kept coming to vote. There is education in a nutshell: a tight community of children, teachers, parents and of course, principals all teaching the principles of life.
