By:JOSEPH KELLARD
The race has lost its civility. Hastava claims that as the spouse of the teachers' union vice president, Pozin should not be allowed any influence over the school budgets. Pozin countercharges that as a real estate broker, Hastava's interests are in protecting property values, not education.
Both portray themselves as family men.
A lifelong Island Park resident, Hastava has a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son, and plans to have them attend Island Park schools throughout their school years. "Their lives and futures will be molded in Island Park schools, and that gives me two passionate reasons for my commitment to the quality of this system," said Hastava, an operations manager with his family's real estate business, Hastava Companies, in Island Park.
An electrician who has lived in Island Park for 15 years, Pozin has a 14-year-old who attends Lincoln Orens Middle School and a 9-year-old who attends Hegarty School. "I'm very involved with the kids, and I'm about kids," said Pozin, who is vice president of the Island Park Little League. "I'm running because I want to see the right thing done for the kids."
Pozin's wife, Patricia, has been a third-grade teacher at Hegarty for 16 years and is vice president of the Island Park Faculty Association, the union that covers the teachers, teaching assistants, nurses and custodial staff. Pozin points to state law that allows a person who has a spouse working for the district to be elected to the board, saying there is no conflict of interest involved in his running for the board when it comes to teachers' contracts.
"The superintendent negotiates a contract with the Teachers Association," Pozin said. "They've always had a friendly, great rapport, they've never gone to arbitration or anything past the association and superintendent working out a contract ... There never has been an issue, and I don't think there will be, because we are not a confrontational district."
Hastava says the conflict involved is that Pozin would have to recuse himself from any board discussions and deliberations regarding the budget. Hastava said that with Island Park's $24.7 million budget (about 45 percent of which will go toward salaries), which both candidates characterize as fair, if Pozin were on the board he would have to recuse himself from consideration of more than $11 million of the budget and about 60 percent of the entire staff because of his wife's position in the district.
"If you take a five-person board and make it four people, you run the risk of a lot of ties, which could effectively tie the hands of the board," Hastava said. "It just doesn't lend itself to a good, vibrant working board, whereas my candidacy has no such limitations."
Perhaps the most controversial issue surrounding the election is the board's consideration of the creation of a high school in the district. Island Park high school students attend West Hempstead High, and Superintendent Dr. Ed Price held a meeting last month in which the administration, the board, college professors with knowledge about the subject and the community discussed the possibility of creating a high school as part of Lincoln Orens.
Both candidates indicated that it is an issue that has to be studied further before any decision can be made.
Pozin expressed skepticism about the viability of creating a high school, regarding it as a tremendous tax burden, and in some respects he regards it as a Catch 22. "A lot of [elderly people] will have to sell their houses and move," he said. "Granted, that would bring in new families that would be attracted because we have a high school, but at the same time it would force a lot of people out of here who have lived here a very long time."
Pozin sees West Hempstead as a good school, with many benefits that he would not want to lose by possibly switching to a high school that would house between 300 and 350 children and perhaps be unable to offer the kind of programs, such as all the Advanced Placement courses, that are offered at larger high schools.
Pozin also expressed concern about the viability of sports programs for a small high school. A coach of Little League baseball, Catholic Youth Organizations basketball at Sacred Heart Church and Oceanside Stallions football, Pozin is running, in part, on the belief that the schools should offer more athletic activities for kids.
"We only have the one field at Lincoln Orens," Pozin explained. "The seventh- and eighth-graders play baseball there and track there. Now you are going to add a JV baseball team or football team or a varsity baseball team? You'll have four sports teams playing on one field. There's no space there to build anything else. We don't have a football team for seventh and eighth grade. You're going to be able to offer one for high school?"
Hastava believes that if West Hempstead proved to no longer be a viable high school for Island Park students, he would explore all avenues and not pigeonhole himself into looking at creating a high school in the village. "I'd like to possibly speak to East Rockaway, Oceanside, Lynbrook, and see what other options are out there first," he said. "Because I would never leave for any less than what our children have now at West Hempstead. That wouldn't be prudent to do."
Hastava questioned why the East Rockaway school district, which has its own high school, spends $4,000 less per year to educate its students than in Island Park. "From that aspect, as a prudent taxpayer, I'd like to know that we're getting the best bang for our buck," he said. "And a vote for me puts a person in there who can actually do that and will do that."
The vote for the school board will be held on May 18 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
