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Andrew Rapiejko

New trustee Allison Noonan raises her hand as she is sworn into office in the Northport school board. Photo by Wenhao Ma.

By Wenhao Ma

The Northport-East Northport board of education welcomed change to their meeting last Thursday as Allison Noonan was sworn in after beating out incumbent Julia Binger last May.

Noonan, a social studies teacher in Syosset school district, is involved in the PTA and SEPTA. During the election season, she said she believed her newcomer status was exactly why she is the right choice for the job.

“I am not a part of the board that supported a failed administrator,” Noonan said of former Northport-East Northport Superintendent Marylou McDermott in a previous interview with Times Beacon Record Newspapers.

She said under McDermott’s tenure, district facilities, like the athletic fields, bathrooms and classrooms, fell into disrepair, and she would work to fix those problems.

At her swearing-in, Noonan said she was excited to get to work.

“I was thrilled that I was able to go out and support the community.” Noonan said when asked about her reaction after being elected back in May. “It was very sweet. I hope that I can be able to work for [the parents and students] consistently.”

New vice president David Stein raises his hand as he is sworn into office in the Northport school board. Photo by Wenhao Ma.
New vice president David Stein raises his hand as he is sworn into office in the Northport school board. Photo by Wenhao Ma.

Incumbent Andrew Rapiejko was also sworn in at the meeting on July 7, and the board agreed to vote him in for another term as president.

Rapiejko, who has spent more than a half decade working as a board member, is entering his seventh year as a member, and said he is thrilled to continue doing his job.

“Thank you for the honor of being able to serve again as president,” Rapiejko said to other board members, parents and students. He said he is looking forward to a successful 2016-17 school year.

During election season, Badanes said he is proud of his work in the search to find a new leader for the district.

“Hiring the superintendent, who’s done a tremendous job this year, was a big accomplishment,” Rapiejko said in a phone interview. “Being able to sort through the applicants and choose someone who’s the right fit was a challenge.”

Board member David Stein was elected at the meeting as the new vice president, replacing David Badanes. Stein said he is happy to work for the board.

“We got great schools,” he said. “We just work on keeping them that way.”

Lori McCue was the third board member elected in May, but she was absent from the meeting.

On election night, McCue said she looks forward to finishing an energy performance contract with the district that aims to make it more energy-efficient.

I’m very grateful for the people who came out and supported me,” McCue said.

Northport Superintendent Robert Banzer and Board President Andrew Rapiejko discuss how to handle the vote that could lead to a decrease in board member size. Photo by Victoria Espinoza.

Northport residents will officially have a chance to reduce the size of the Northport-East Northport Board of Education this spring.

The board passed a resolution at Thursday night’s meeting that will add a proposition to the budget vote this spring to decrease the membership of the board from nine trustees to seven.

The United Taxpayers of Northport-East Northport came to the board with a petition in June saying that nine members have made the board less effective.

In their petition the United Taxpayers stated “statistical and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that school districts operate in a more effective and efficient manner when the composition of the board is limited to no more than seven board members.”

Armand D’Accordo, a member of the group, backed up its sentiment.

“I have gotten the sense at board meetings — both through watching and interacting — that it seems a bit dysfunctional, due to the makeup of how many members and how long they’ve been around,” D’Accordo said in a previous interview.

He also said the organization became interested in this idea after reading a study by Nina Dorata, titled “School District Boards, Audit Committees, and Budget Oversight: Seeking a Formula for Good Governance,” published in the March 2013 issue of the CPA Journal, which exposed the correlation between school district budget increases and tenure of board members.

“I do feel confident in the public,” D’Accordo said of the resolution passing. “There is a general sense I have been getting while collecting signatures for this petition that the public wants a smaller school board.”

Trustees have said they do not think this is a necessary step.

“We have a large and diverse community with a lot of different areas to represent,” Vice President David Badanes said in a previous interview. “The more people that participate gives you more eyes for each issue. The statistics are speculative and so far the arguments do not convince me.”

After the vote, Trustee Jennifer Thompson asked if the district would be held responsible to inform the public on this issue.

“Since this proposition came from the community and not the board or the district, how will the community be informed of the pros and cons of it?” she asked at the meeting. “Who is responsible for disseminating that information?”

Trustee Lori McCue suggested that at one of the upcoming budget meetings, the board give the factual information, and discuss how, if this proposition is successful, the members would be dwindles down from nine to seven.

Change is in the air at Northport-East Northport schools.

School board Trustee Andrew Rapiejko, a five-year incumbent who served as vice president, was sworn in as the board’s president at its reorganizational meeting on Wednesday, following a nomination by President Julia Binger and an 8-1 vote. Trustee Regina Pisacani was the lone vote against the appointment.

Newly re-elected Trustee David Badanes was nominated and voted vice president of the board — but not without an unsuccessful attempt by Pisacani to nominate newcomer Trustee David Stein to the slot. Her motion to do so failed to gain support, and Badanes was unanimously appointed.

The July 1 meeting was the district’s first with new Superintendent Robert Banzer at the helm. Banzer, along with Stein, recently re-elected Trustee Tammie Topel, Badanes, District Clerk Beth Nystrom and new audit committee member Edward Kevorkian were all officially sworn in.

In his remarks to the community, Rapiejko called it a “critical year” for the district, and pointedly addressed what he called a divide on the board.

“The elephant in the room is this split on the board,” he said

While the board typically votes unanimously on most items, Rapiejko said in a Thursday phone interview that the community perceives a divide on the school board. Those differences among board members have given rise to tensions that began under the administration of former Superintendent Marylou McDermott, he said.

“The former superintendent is out of the equation now,” he said in his speech on Wednesday. “And I’m looking forward and to move on. I think we have to move forward and it’s critical we do that.”

He urged the school community to respect each other and said it is the board’s responsibility to set that tone of respect. In a phone interview, he said he was heartened that his appointment earned almost unanimous support, which hasn’t been the norm at reorganizational meetings in recent years past.

“We can disagree, we can have very strong opinions, but there’s a way to do it and a way to do it respectfully.”