East Meadow Board of Education race is down to the wire

As the May 15 East Meadow School District budget and Board of Education vote approaches, candidates are preparing to greet community members, present their ideas and address topics and issues that are central to the district.

Eileen Napolitano is challenging incumbent school board Trustee Brian O’Flaherty for his seat, while Joseph Danenza is challenging Trustee Melissa Tell. The candidates will face off at a public forum at the East Meadow Public Library on May 7 at 7 p.m.

O’Flaherty vs. Napolitano

O’Flaherty is president of the board of managers for the East Meadow Townhouse Condominium and has been on the board since 2007. He has been involved with the Kiwanis Club since 2005, and was its president in 2015. He is also active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Council of East Meadow Community Organizations, the Community Association of Stewart Avenue, the Building Owners and Management Association, and 11 PTA units.

O’Flaherty was elected to the Board of Education in 2003, and has served as vice president and president. “I think this district is one of the best in New York state,” he said, adding that he intends to secure $8 million in state aid that he says the district is owed. “I think we, as a board, need to get more involved in contacting the politicians,” he said.

Napolitano has lived in East Meadow since 1999, where she raised her children, Anthony, 20, and Krista, 18. She is a graduate of Longwood High School, and completed an ophthalmic dispensing program at NYC Technical College in Brooklyn. Today Napolitano is an optician with Diamond Vision in Rockville Centre.

A top priority, she said, is providing for the district’s children. She has been president of the Barnum Woods Elementary School PTA, president and vice president of the Woodland Middle School PTA and vice president of the East Meadow High School PTA. She was the 2010 recipient of the PTA Council’s Founders Day award.

Napolitano’s top three goals, she said, are enhancing school safety, tackling the opioid epidemic through education and initiating an apprenticeship program to prepare students for life after graduation. “We need a transition for kids graduating high school and going into an apprenticeship program,” she said, adding that the district could work with local labor unions to provide guidance for such students.

Napolitano said that the district should implement more programs about substance use and abuse that connect with children on their grade level, starting with fifth-grade students.

Tell versus Danenza

Incumbent Melissa Tell was born in East Meadow, earned a degree in visual design from Hunter College and moved back to the community with her husband, Ben. She has been a trustee for four years.

She said she believes in creating policies that boost student achievement while remaining fiscally responsible to the taxpayers. One of them includes the rights of parents to decide what is in the best interest of their children when it comes to the state assessments.

In addition to being a student advocate, Tell said she strongly believes in foestering transparency and promoting community participation in the district. She has previously advocated for board meetings to be recorded.
“My top priority was to give back to my community,” Tell said of her inspiration to run for the board. “The Board of Education has made a lot of great changes, but we as a district need to continue to move forward.”

Joseph Danenza, who is challenging Tell, lives in East Meadow with his wife, Meri, and has two adult children, Lauren, 32, and Harris, 26. He was a board trustee for seven years and served as vice president. “I believe that my strongest qualification for being on our board is the breath of my business, government, education and community-service experience,” he said.

Danenza majored in political science and psychology at St. John’s University, and earned a Master of Business Administration from CUNY Baruch College. He has leadership experience at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bankers Trust, Dreyfus, Citibank and Coopers & Lybrand. For eight years, he was the information systems director for North and South American technology operations for the Netherlands-based TNT Express Worldwide, and he is now the assistant director of police information systems for the Nassau County Police Department. 

Danenza is an active member of the East Meadow Kiwanis and an associate member of the Chamber of Commerce. He recently received the New York State School Boards Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.