Lester named new school board president

The Long Beach Board of Education voted unanimously at its July 1 reorganization meeting to elect Roy Lester and Stewart Mininsky to serve as the board’s president and vice president, respectively.

“When it comes to the schools, I’m always looking to see how we can push ourselves to be an academically superior school district,” Lester said. “I want our kids to have the best school district there is. And we have some very talented kids and incredibly talented teachers and there’s no reason we shouldn’t shine.”

The board’s two newly re-elected members, Mininsky and former president Darlene Tangney, were sworn in at the meeting. They will each serve three-year terms. Mininsky was first elected in 2012 and served as the board’s vice president for the past school year.

Lester has served multiple terms on the board before and was the president during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. This is his third time being elected president of the body. He added that improving student performance isn’t necessarily about a more rigorous workload; it’s about quality teaching. He cited an influx of new teachers bringing “great ideas and lots of enthusiasm” to the district in the past few years as a step in the right direction.