48.0°,
Light Drizzle Fog/Mist High school board shakeup
Four trustee seats turn over; three new elementary presidents
Nearly half of the Valley Stream Central High School District’s Board of Education seats will be filled by trustees who didn’t serve there last year. Following reorganization meetings for the three elementary districts on Monday, four of the nine seats will change hands for the 2014-15 school years.
Among the board members not returning are last year’s president and vice president. The high school board consists of nine members, three from each elementary board.
The biggest change came in District 30, where longtime high school board members Ken Cummings and Elise Antonelli are out, while Trustees Cristobal Stewart and Jim Lavery are in. Carolyn Pean remains the lone holdover.
In District 13, Joseph DiSibio and Jeanne Greco Jacobs will remain on the high school board. Bill Stris, who served there for 24 years, returns after a two-year absence, replacing Frank Chiachiere.
In District 24, Tony Iadevaio and Larry Trogel will return to the high school board, while Lisa Pellicane will replace Donna LaRocco. The addition of Pellicane, who has two daughters at South High School, ensures that at least one of the district’s three representatives has children in the district. LaRocco’s youngest son graduated from South last month.
The selection of the three high school trustees from District 30, which took place on Monday morning, was not unanimous. Antonelli and Cummings voted against the proposed slate, and Antonelli’s countermotion to send herself, Cummings and Stewart to the high school board was defeated.
“The feeling was that we really wanted to make sure that we had all of our board members familiar with the greater community issues,” Stewart said. “Elise and Ken aren’t going anywhere. They’re still on the [District] 30 board. If need be, we can pick their brains.”
“I’m sad to not be a part of the high school district anymore,” said Antonelli, who was its board president last year, and has served since 2007. She said she would miss her colleagues from the other elementary districts.
Cummings had been on the high school board for eight years, and served as Board of Education president in 2007-08 and again in 2010-11. In between, he was District 30’s board president.
Antonelli said she disagreed with the decision to remove two veteran high school board members at the same time. “I’m concerned about continuity,” she said. “It’s good to have new ideas on the board, but not a complete turnover.”
Stewart served two years as a high school trustee, from 2008 to 2010, including a year as vice president.
Lavery, whose son will be a junior at South High in the fall, noted that all three of District 30’s representatives will have children in the district next year. He said that the change in high school trustees is not a reflection on the work of Antonelli and Cummings. “It’s nothing against them,” he said. “They did a great job. It was more about just giving others a chance.”
Lavery added that he is looking forward to serving on the high school board. “I know how the general business of the school operations goes,” he said. “It will be a matter of adapting what I already know, getting to know the people better.”
On Tuesday night, the high school board picked Trogel as its president and Jacobs as vice president. Chiachiere, if he stayed, would have been in line to be high school board president this year, after serving as vice president last year.
He said he asked not to return after 20 years. “I’ve been privileged to see a sea change in how the high school board operates,” he said. “The high school is just in a good place right now. I look back on the 20 years and I say well done, time to move on.”
Elementary board leaders
After two yeas as vice president of District 30’s board, Stewart takes over as president this year. Lavery will be vice president. Stewart said he is looking to build off the successes of the previous school year, and is excited to work more closely with Superintendent Dr. Nicholas Stirling and the administrative team.
“I feel well prepared for it,” Stewart said of his new position. “We have a veteran board. It makes my job, or any board president’s job, a lot easier.”
Following the split vote in determining high school board members, Stewart said he is confident that the District 30 board can still get its business done at the elementary level. “We try to work together,” he said. “We try to talk things out. That’s been part of our success as a board, that we work well together.”
In District 13, DiSibio will be the board president, a position he also held in the 2009-10 school year. Toni Pomerantz, who is in her second year on the board, will serve as vice president. Patricia Farrell, elected in May, took the oath of office to officially begin her board service.
LaRocco will serve as president of
the District 24 board for the first time,
and Trogel will be the vice president. Armando Hernandez was sworn in as the newest trustee.
