Four candidates compete for two seats in Kings Park

Four candidates compete for two seats in Kings Park

Kings Park High School. Photo by Rita J. Egan

The Kings Park board of education race has four candidates vying for two seats at large. Incumbents Diane Nally and Kevin Johnston will be on the ballot May 18 along with newcomers Clayton Cobb and Cynthia Grimley.

Both Cobb and Grimley were inspired to run after they and other parents were discontented with the reopening process in September as Kings Park secondary school students returned to the classrooms five days a week in person later than younger children. While the school year began with a hybrid model, with students attending school two days a week and taking classes remotely the others, the return to buildings the entire week for middle and high school students didn’t occur until a few weeks ago.

All candidates agree that an upcoming summer program in the district will be beneficial to ensure that students have an opportunity to fill in any learning gaps or deal with any emotional or social problems caused by the pandemic.

Clayton Cobb

Clayton Cobb

Cobb has lived in the district for more than eight years. He and his wife have three children who were homeschooled temporarily during the pandemic but will be returning to the classrooms in September. The vice president of an information technology consulting firm said that before the schools were shut down in March of 2020, he wasn’t familiar with BOE dealings, and then he started paying attention.

He said he believes that his IT experience can help in providing new solutions, and his business experience would also be an asset to a board position.

He said the district’s response during the shutdowns and the return to the classrooms wasn’t handled properly. It wasn’t until parents pushed back after a survey was sent out and parents rallied that the BOE took them seriously. Cobb said the board members weren’t tenacious enough with getting all students back to school full time in person. He added he felt they should have studied and researched the data more.

“You have to be forward thinking, proactive,” Cobb said. “You have to do research. You have to look at other counties, look at other states, look at the districts in other counties. You assemble, gather and assimilate information and come up with a solution and keep fighting for it.”

Cobb added that it’s important in cases such as this to bring up any legal aspects and harmfulness to the students even to state and county officials.

He said he felt at times the board was too quick to dismiss new ideas, and with his business background he said he understands how taxpayers are the same to the district as a customer is to a business.

“The whole point of this board and the school district is us,” he said.

Cynthia Grimley

Cynthia Grimley

A Kings Park resident since 1988, Grimley graduated from Kings Park High School and is raising her two daughters in the district.

Grimley holds a degree in psychology and education. She started her career as a special education teacher for six years and then moved on to higher education in 2003 where she worked at Suffolk County Community College. She is currently employed at Stony Brook University where she is a testing coordinator for the Student Accessibility Support Center.

While Grimley said she thought about running for the board of education before, she never felt a need to do so until now.

“I just feel that this year was difficult for everybody,” Grimley said.

She added that because she works at SBU she saw how another educational institution proceeded after the pandemic forced shutdowns. According to Grimley early on in March 2020, SBU leadership found a way to connect with students, even though she said higher education systems are different, she said she felt there should have been more connection with the students in Kings Park by teachers.

Her older daughter went a long time after the shutdown before hearing from teachers, and Grimley said she addressed her concerns about both daughters’ education to the BOE members, even though she said she was understanding that the district wasn’t prepared to teach via Zoom

“I kept going to board meetings and I said, ‘Why is this OK with anybody?’” Grimley said.  “Why is this OK with the principals, with the administration, with the board, that there are children who haven’t had any connection with their teachers for weeks?”

Over the summer she became part of the reopening committee. She said she was vocal about there being a return to five full days and also a remote option. She said she felt not much changed in the new school year with sixth- through 12th-graders still following a hybrid model, and it was frustrating to see other schools returning full time early on. She added many on the board don’t currently have children in school.

“I just think that the board members didn’t have kids in the schools and didn’t realize,” she said. “We saw the kids suffering — the parents who have children — and saw the kids. The second my kids went back to school full time, it was like two new kids. It was like a light switch, both of them.”

Working in higher education in disability services, Grimley said she knows it’s hard to compare the two, but she feels her work experience, especially working with special-needs students, can be an asset to the board.

“I have a lot of background about accessibility, making education accessible for all and universal design and that sort of thing, so I feel like I bring a unique perspective to the board,” she said.

Kevin Johnston

Kevin Johnston

A resident of the hamlet for nearly 35 years, Johnston’s two children graduated from Kings Park High School in 2007 and 2010. The student-teacher supervisor with SUNY Oneonta has a background in education including being a former teacher, coach and adviser in the Kings Park school district from 1981-2015.

Johnston is completing his second term on the board. With issues due to the pandemic, he said it was important to run again due to financial constraints with the district possibly not getting state funding this year.

Johnston said one thing that will help financially is that the district just received money from winning a lawsuit from a case which was going on for nearly 10 years.

“We feel we have a lot to do, especially concerning loss of learning and the mental, social, emotional needs,” Johnston said.

He added in addition to a program implemented for this summer to deal with loss of learning, next year it’s important to look at more staffing for academic intervention and for standard social, emotional needs.

He said the district has to make every penny count as they don’t have chair people, and don’t have a level of checks and balances that other school districts with bigger budgets have.

“So, we do scrutinize the entire budget process, very carefully,” he said. “Make sure that there is no fluff.”

He said recently an opponent asked what are the wants versus the needs of the district.

“We’re just trying to meet the needs of the students,” he said. “We don’t have an agenda. We don’t have a special list of wants or wish list.”

Diane Nally

Diane Nally

The current board president has lived in Kings Park for more than 60 years. In addition to her three children being graduates of the high school, she has a grandchild starting kindergarten soon.

In 2016, Nally retired as assistant director of religion education at St. Joseph’s. If reelected, this will be Nally’s fourth term on the board, and she said she would like “to continue to improve the school district and maintain the progress we have achieved over the last nine years.”

Regarding the full return to school, she said the board acted accordingly saying the timing was “spot on” due to the decreasing number of COVID cases. She said a plan has been introduced to address learning loss and social emotional learning. The program will begin this summer.

“Our current school board acted responsibly by ensuring that the health and safety of all our students and staff were our number one priority,” she said. “We continually sought updated guidance for bringing all students back to school five days a week, which we did last month.”

Nally said her more-than-25 years with St. Joseph’s provide her with valuable experience working with parents and children to resolve issues. Her nine years on the board she said has enabled her to form relationships “with members of other school boards and with members of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.”

Nally said she is an advocate for small class sizes. She said this made it possible to bring grades K-5 back to school five days a week in the beginning of the school year. In September 2019, a one-to-one device program was introduced in the district. It was originally expected to take a few years before middle and high school students had devices.

“In response to the COVID pandemic, the board, superintendent, administrators, teachers and staff worked collaboratively to accomplish this goal by September 2020, which made it possible to run our hybrid and remote learning platforms,” she said. “With the increased state aid we received, we were able to set a tax levy of 1.99%, the lowest in years, while maintaining all current curriculum, programs and activities. As a responsible school board member, I am always mindful of the impact of tax increases on our community.”

Budget and voting information

Kings Park School District residents will vote on a 1.60% budget increase and 1.99% tax levy increase for the 2021-22 school year.

The budget vote and trustee election will be held Tuesday, May 18, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Kings Park High School back gymnasium, 200 Route 25A, Kings Park.2021-