WE
MUST HAVE CHANGEWE
MUST HAVE CHANGE
The school board election on May 15th will and should be about change. Our district has been underperforming for too long. The incumbent Board of Education has enthusiastically supported a philosophy of education that deprecates the value of knowledge and skill in favor of poorly thought-out notions of discovery and “deep thought.” Thus, little children are too often tethered to computers and calculators for basic information that POB students once had in their heads. Where the Plainview-Old Bethpage schools used to have academic standards well beyond those of the state, gradually teachers have been encouraged to see the state standards as an academic ceiling on their teaching efforts. To correct a long festering problem with the district’s math program, our union had to take on the role of community consensus builder, so poor has been the leadership of the district. The members of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers are capable of accomplishing more for the students of our community. They require the support and commitment of the Board of Education and an administration . That is why our union is supporting the change represented by the candidacies of Lori Weinstein, Gary Bettan and Angel Cepeda.
Lori Weinstein has been a
class act in the POB school community for some time.
She has held a number of PTA positions and served on district committees.
That experience, however, is not the main reason for our support of her
candidacy. We support Lori because
throughout the years we have known and worked with her, she has demonstrated a
talent for asking hard questions, looking at issues from unique perspectives and
being unwilling to accept humbug for information.
She strikes us as just what Plainview-Old Bethpage needs if we are to
chart a new direction.
Gary Bettan has demonstrated
responsible leadership in the parent crusade to bring sanity to the district’s
math program. We have found him to
be pragmatic in his approach to solving problems and a keen builder of
consensus. He prides himself in
“thinking out of the box” as a way to find solutions to difficult problems.
We believe his experiences as a business person will enable him to
oversee the administration of the district, establishing real systems of
accountability. We especially like
the things
Angel Cepeda ran unsuccessfully for the Board of education last year. While we didn’t support him then, we were not unmindful of his talents. Throughout this year, we have continued talking with Angel and have had our initial impressions confirmed. We have found him to be a very thoughtful member of the business community who intuitively knows that the management of our district has been flawed for some time. We agree with him that there are many ways to improve the delivery of services to the district’s children while controlling costs. We agree with him too that our schools should be performing at higher levels and aren’t in large measure due poor management and a skewed sense mission. We know that he is not the budget-slasher his opponents have tried to paint him to be, and we have been deeply disturbed by the whispering campaign that suggests that he is not the fine person that we know he is. Angel believes in giving back to the community that sustains him. We believe that’s the kind of spirit we need on our Board of Education.