By Richard Tedesco
"A strong voter turnout in Lawrence propelled pro-budget candidates Dr. David Sussman, Nahum Marcus and Dr. Sol Blisko to victory over their public-school-advocate opponents, Pam Greenbaum, Andrew Levey and Maribel Cancelliere, who opposed the budget.
The $92.7 million budget, an increase of a modest 0.9 percent increase, passed with 5,527 votes in favor, and 3,191 opposed.
In the battle between school board incumbents, Sussman drew 5,309 votes to Greenbaum's 4,566. Marcus garnered 5,057 votes to defeat Cancelliere, who had 4,715. Blisko won over Levey with a virtually identical vote tally, 5,046 to 4,725.
The controversial universal pre-K busing proposition passed, with 4,593 votes in favor and 3,967 opposed.
The library budget passed easily, 6,301 to 2,435.
Dr. John Fitzsimons, Lawrence school superintendent, said that while the strategy of passing a budget with a minimal increase gets District 15 off the "merry-go-round of contingency, " it's not a long-term solution: "You can't continue this strategy year in and year out. With inflation and contract obligations and increases in various costs, they're going to be looking at increases that are going to impact the tax levy."
In the wake of one of the district's nastiest school board elections in recent memory, Sussman tried to sound a note of conciliation: "We've all got to work together. We have to approach everybody as though they were us."
Sussman said it was necessary to rebuild the public schools and the confidence of the community, but offered no immediate blueprint for how the board might heal the wounds of a bitterly divided district.
Marcus, who expressed a concern for all children in the district during his campaign, said, "I don't care if they go to public school or private school. We need to improve the public schools and we need to give the private-school students what they need."
Levey predicted this election would be the last one in which public school candidates would be competitive, aniticipating a continuing demographic shift favoring residents with students in private schools. "This is the end of the Lawrence school district as we know it," he said.
Bruce Scher, president of Advocates for Lawrence Public Schools, said the results were a reflection of the fractious ad campaign and the resulting fallout. "Clearly there are a number of people who did not come out to vote and that's attributable to the Nassau Herald turning this into a religious campaign," Scher said.
Overall turnout was similar to the tallies in the Lawrence school board election five years ago.
"The other side took our ad and turned it into a religious issue. They never addressed the issues in the ad," Scher said. "The thing was never about religion. It was about the quality of the educational system in Lawrence."
He pointed out that there was no public outcry about the attack ads aimed at ALPS-supported candidate Greenbaum.
Greenbaum offered her own post-mortem on the campaign with a simple suggestion for the new board: "I think that a start to becoming less divisive is for the board members to keep their promises and do what is right for all the children, which is all I ever tried to do."
She said she intended to remain active in community affairs and at her synagogue, Temple Beth El.
Her decision to abandon her seat on the board to challenge fellow incumbent Sussman may have been an ill-considered tactic.
Greenbaum and Levey both claimed they were up against the Orthodox Union in this election, contending that the OU was behind the anti-Greenbaum ads. Those ads were paid for by Jerry Lewis, a political activist who claimed he formerly had ties with the OU, but was no longer a member of the organization.
Steve Steiner, a spokesman for the Orthodox Union confirmed that Lewis is not currently assoiciated with organization, and said the OU would never sanction such ads. "We work with broader swaths of the community, even beyond the Jewish community," he said.
The ALPS-suppported candidates also contended that an ad in an Israeli periodical soliciting voters who might be eligible to cast ballots in the Lawrence election was placed by the Orthodox Union.
Howie Beigelman, OU deputy director of public policy, said someone in the organization's office in Israel had placed the ad without any OU sanction. But the ad was seek- ing students who might be eligible to vote in the election. "It wasn't that we were trying to track down people with dual citizenship," he said.
In the tangled web of issues the small school budget increase raised, ALPS claimed it was officially maintaining neutrality about its passage. But Scher conceded that an e-mail circulated by a member of the ALPS board in the final week before the election did exhort public school parents to vote against the budget, along with the pre-K busing referendum.
That referendum could prove to be a point of continuing controversy if, as public school advocates claim, it underestimated the cost of the program at $600,000.
Dr. Asher Mansdorf, the outgoing board president who chose to not stand for another term, sounded a distinctly positive note on the conduct of the election: "This is a celebration of democracy. There was a campaign waged, the votes spoke, and it is my hope that those elected chart a path that shows how important the children are."
Next week, the school board faces its first test in a public hearing to compare bids from two architects for emergency repairs to several schools.
The competing firms will make presentations and present revised bids for the work that needs to be done, including repairs to leaking roofs and replacing steam pipes in the high school and middle school.
Comments about this article ? RTedesco@liherald.com or call (516) 569-4000, ext. 204
