By Andrew Coen
There will be at least one new face on the school board in Lawrence, after incumbent Trustee Anthony Licatesi decided not to seek a second term. Licatesi, an attorney from Atlantic Beach Estates, won election to the board in 2002. District 15 school board Vice President Rose Harris, who first won election to the board with Licatesi in 2002, will seek another term, with Lawrence resident Murray Forman challenging her.
Stanley Kopilow and Shlomo Huttler, Lawrence residents who ran unsuccessfully for the school board last year, will vie for Licatesi's open seat. Kopilow, an attorney and a 1965 Lawrence High School alum, lost to trustee Dr. Asher Mansdorf last year, 4,005 votes to 3,685.
Huttler, an attorney from Lawrence who has children in the private schools and a niece in the District 15 public schools, lost to trustee Pam Greenbaum last year, 4,047 votes to 3,548.
Three years ago, Forman was president of a group called the Association for Learning and Education with Responsible Taxation (ALERT), which ran two private school candidates, Jay Gelman and Mel Lifshitz, against Harris and Licatesi, who were backed by Alliance for Lawrence Public Schools (ALPS). The races turned into a bitter campaign, with accusations made in ads and letters to the editor. Harris ended up defeating Lifshitz and independent candidate Vicki Fishof with 59 percent of the vote in an election that turned out more than 10,000 voters to the polls.
Former Lawrence High School PTA president Sherry Barash seriously considered running for the board and filed the necessary paper work to run for Licatesi's open seat but decided in the end not to throw her hat in the ring. "I was seriously considering running because I have been an advocate for children for 17 years but with the feeling of the community I don't think I can make a difference," said Barash of what she described as extreme divisiveness in the district. In Hewlett-Woodmere, incumbent school board president Howard Weinick and trustee Teena Ditchek Korman were the only candidates to file before the 5 p.m. April 18 deadline, meaning there will be no contested races this year in District 14.
Weinick, as an Industrial Arts teacher in the Bronx, has served on the Hewlett-Woodmere school board since 1993 and was first elected as the board's president last July after the retirement of president Richard Braverman. Before becoming school board president, Weinick was vice president under Braverman. Weinick received 2,874 votes in his last school board victory in 2002. Korman, who resides in the District 14 portion of Valley Stream and has been a longtime advocate for the Hewlett-Woodmere schools, received 3,130 votes in her initial victory to the board in 2002.
The school board elections will take place on Tuesday, May 17 with meet the candidates nights scheduled for May 2 in Lawrence and May 9 in Hewlett-Woodmere.
Comments about this story? Acoen@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 204.
