With two incumbent trustees, Tasmin Meghji and David Keefe, choosing not to seek re-election, the East Williston school district race has been thrown wide open.
District voters will see four new names on their ballot this year and two new faces on their board after the election is over.
Running for Meghji’s old seat, which she has held since 2020, are Nadia Afridi, a surgeon with two children currently in the district, and Eswar Sivaraman, who has a PhD in Industrial Engineering and works with AI, machine learning and data science in research and development roles in marketing agencies and has had three children in the district.
Afridi said she was motivated to run after her oldest child went through the college application process last year because she wanted to increase information and support coming from the school for families during senior year.
“It’s a lot. You almost need to sacrifice your first child to be able to understand all this stuff,” laughed Afridi, who has worked on the district’s financial advisory committee and superintendent advisory committee. She said if elected, she’d work to compile resources explaining common terms like early action and early decision, guides on weighted and unweighted GPAs and increase knowledge and availability of ACT and SAT preparation courses in the district.
If elected, Afridi said she’d also like to implement technological improvements in the district to better track student performance so no one slips through the cracks, educate all student athletes on using AEDs, use expertise from her MBA in crafting the district’s budget, conduct outreach to new families moving into the district, implement world language curriculum earlier on and ensure there is adequate support for special education programs at the school.
“I really feel like we could do a better job of leveraging the use of technology in the district to be able to maybe help track and monitor how our kids are doing,” Afridi said. She thinks adding new systems could be used to identify when a child’s performance drops, so larger issues can be addressed, as well as to help them organize plans to obtain additional certificates or awards.
Sivaraman said he was motivated to run by a desire to give back to the district, which he said his children have thoroughly enjoyed, succeeded in and benefited from. As a parent of a child in the district’s elementary school and another who graduated Wheatley last year, he said he thought his understanding and experience with the wide range of grades in the district would be beneficial on the board.
“If I had an opportunity to give back and contribute something to the school district, I would be extremely happy,” he said, adding that he would see serving on the board as an act of gratitude to the community who has accepted him and his wife as immigrants.
If elected, Sivaraman said some of his priorities on the board would include working to expand academic offerings like STEM and computer programs, increasing budget transparency, addressing what he described as a downturn in enrollment, working to increase community and parental involvement at board meetings, and devoting additional resources to the district’s fine and performing arts program, which he believes is lacking compared to neighboring districts.
“I have noticed that over the past three, four years, the board has become a little bit more insulated from the needs of the community,” Sivaraman said, adding that he’d work to get more parents involved and attending meetings. “They’re a little bit less responsible to the needs of the community, and you can see that the engagement from the community is next to nothing.”
He also expressed a concern that the district was addressing mental health issues in students without enough prior research, saying that, if elected, he would work to find data on the district’s mental health issues and to ensure that the district was only providing support in cases it was truly needed.
Running for Keefe’s old seat, which he has held since 2010, are Borcheng, or “Bo,” Hsu, an IT engineer who coaches the St. Aidan’s basketball team and has two children in the district, and Alina Uzilova, the director of a health center and President of Roslyn Country Club Civic Association who has had three children in the district.
Uzilova, who holds an MBA and is pursuing a Ph.D in global leadership from Indiana Tech and has children with special needs, said that ensuring adequate resources are provided to the special education program, smart staffing and budget transparency would be some of her priorities on the board.
“As a parent of two children with special needs, I understand firsthand the importance of strong, accountable schools,” Uzilova said.“I am proud and thankful to this country for giving me the ability to have the opportunity to run to sit on a school board.”
If elected, Uzilova, who has served on the district’s superintendent advisory committee, strategic planning committee and cultural committee, said she would work to better understand and address what she called a drop in enrollment and parent trust in the district, as well as to present the budget line-by-line to the community, cut wasteful spending and focus on academic investment.
She is a graduate of the Nassau County Citizens Police Academy, sits on the police commissioner’s community council for her local district, has received endorsement from Council Member Ed Scott and been recognized for outstanding community service by State Comptroller Elaine Phillips.
Hsu said he was running for the board to push the district forward and ensure that parents of younger kids are represented.
“I would like to keep the school district’s performance up, to build on our excellence with everyone going forward,” he said, adding that he felt an investment in the district and the board. “Most of the board members have kids graduating out of the system. It’ll be good to have someone that has kids that are still early in the system, so we can monitor the school and to ensure that the needs of the students have been taken care of.”
As an IT engineer, Hsu said that if elected, he would work to ensure that new technology, particularly AI, is incorporated into the district in the most effective, safe, productive way possible.
“All the kids, they are handed a Chromebook,” Hsu said. “You could do a lot with Chromebook, but we can also limit what they can do, because we want to ensure that these things are not put into the wrong use.”
He said his other priorities would include ensuring mental health resources are available to all students who need them by maintaining the district’s partnership with outside medical institutions and increasing budget transparency and information dissemination into the community so parents are properly informed.
“No one can sit at home and make suggestions,” Hsu said, emphasizing the importance of greater parental involvement. “We should let them know it’s so easy to be part of the system and to have their input heard, which is critically needed in order to be inclusive and to propel this district forward.”
Hsu and Afridi said their platforms are aligned with each other, saying that they thought the district was performing well overall and were happy with their children’s experience in the schools, and are seeking incremental improvements.
“I’d like to just bring a really healthy, balanced, mature, independent-minded perspective to an institution that will dynamically change and adapt to whatever happens in the world,” Afridi said. “We need to be sensitive to that and do a professional job of trying to maximize the capacity of the school to do what’s good for the kids.”
District residents can cast their vote in the school trustee election on a ballot that will also include a vote on the district’s budget on May 20 between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the Wheatley High School’s auditorium.
