L.B. school board race heats up

Trustee Pat Gallagher says he won’t seek re-election

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n a trustee for 12 years and is the board’s longest-serving member, announced last week that he would not seek re-election in this year’s school board election.

Both Gallagher’s and Trustee Dr. Dennis Ryan’s seats are up this year. The move by Gallagher opens the race up to new faces vying to join a mostly long-serving, tight-knit board, and a few residents have expressed interest in running. The deadline for entering the race is April 30, and the election is May 20.

Gallagher, 67, said he thinks it is time to move on, and that he wants to give someone else in the community a chance to run. “I’m not a young kid anymore, and it’s time for me to settle in, move on and let other people take community leadership,” he said. “Twelve years is the cycle of a student, and after 12 years I decided to graduate.”

Ryan confirmed this week that he would be running for a third term after six years on the board. “With tax caps and the Common Core,” he said, “there is a greater need for experience on the Board of Education.”

Ryan, a retired school administrator, was an assistant superintendent of schools in Great Neck, and a teacher, coach, athletic director and director of pupil personnel services in Long Beach.

“Mr. Gallagher has been a devoted and conscientious trustee,” he said. “I will miss him, and the community will miss his service.”

As of press time on Wednesday, Matt Adler, who was a candidate last year, had decided to run again. But he informed the Herald on Friday that he would no longer run. Warren Vegh, a Long Beach Library board trustee, said he is considering running but has not made a decision.

Vegh, 55, a retired 32-year Long Beach phys. ed. teacher and the owner of a commercial pool company, said that if he decided to run, he would bring to the board business sense and knowledge of the school district and students, and that he would run on a platform of equal-opportunity education for all students, though he offered no details.

Gallagher was born and raised in Long Beach and graduated from Long Beach High School in 1964. He attended Indiana State University on a swimming scholarship, and was class president. He began his teaching career in Seaford, and retired 34 years later as the principal of Seaford High School. He has also been an adjunct professor at Nassau Community College, Molloy College and Hofstra University, was the chief of lifeguards in Long Beach and now works for the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Gallagher said that a school district is a slow-moving entity, and it takes time and patience to accomplish change, but he feels that he has accomplished the goals he set for himself and the board when he began his tenure: developing a rigorous curriculum, offering a variety of college-level courses, improving the district’s infrastructure, helping stabilize school finances and building up the district’s reserve funds. “We’ve been able to move from the paradigm of mediocrity to the paradigm of success,” he said.

One of the less high-profile accomplishments that he said he is proud of was getting more use out of the high school pool by implementing the second-grade swim program, phys. ed. classes and the lifeguard training program, which not only teaches students the lifesaving skills that are so important in a beach community, but also prepares them for a potential summer job. Gallagher also counts the inclusion of Island Park students at Long Beach High School among his top achievements.

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