Schools

Rocky Point Holds Meet the Candidates Night

Six Board of Ed candidates vying for two seats.

The six candidates for the two vacant seats on the Rocky Point Board of Education introduced themselves and answered questions from residents at Meet the Candidates night Thursday in the auditorium.

After each candidate gave their opening speeches, the floor was opened for questions. Here are some of the questions from the night, along with a few responses from the candidates; Michael Nofi (incumbent), Diane Burke (incumbent), Frank Moscatiello, Mary Heely, Alan Longman and Barbara Dallon.

In the current economic climate, what are your ideas for Rocky Point to generate revenue and maintain a high level of programs to which we’ve all become accustomed?

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Barbara Dallon - I think we really need in this economic time to be fiscally responsible. We have to look for the best interest of the kids. You can’t stand there and say you’re cutting this or that until you see what’s in front of you.

Diane Burke – We knew these times were coming and we know they're coming next year and we're figuring out ways to do things better with less money and not have one single thing less for our kids. In fact, we're adding more programs for our kids. We’re getting our kids college and career ready. We may not have come up with new ways to generate revenue but we sure have come up with ways to save money.

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Mary Heely – We can use our local resources...We have retail stores, we have pizza parlors, let’s use our resources directly in our district. Also another way to save revenue…we are paying a huge amount of money for these administrators for 3,000 students.  [We have] a super, assistant super and financial guy, we can find one person sufficiently with the money we are paying, one superintendent to serve all of these students.

Alan Longman - Basically when you’re going to come into the system or the BOE, it’s to check and see the possibilities of what we can and cannot do and not just assume that we work in one direction. Legislation may be an answer to a lot of these problems. Refinancing or having other finances come into the school district may be allowed.

Other than just cutting Superintendents, what avenue do you have in place to preserve what we already have here, which I think is quality results for less.

Longman - It comes back to BOCES, when a school district keeps depending on one institution for its services, it’s not necessary. You need more people to pull your services from, there are other instituions and other things that give the same services, if you don’t use BOCES and use other services we can save money.

Heely - We have to remain fiscally responsible for the kids. That is what's going to maintain the programs and opportunities for the children. I think compared to our neighboring budgets we did a fine job with ours…one thing I would like to see done better is have more fiscal responsibility to the needs of the kids. A huge part of our budget goes to benefits, constructional and administrative salaries. I'd like to see that worked in a way that it can be put back into programs and opportunities for the kids in the district.

Frank Moscatiello – Without having the numbers it's hard to know where we’re going. Sometimes we put a little too much towards one thing, maybe special education or GATES... and the kid that’s in the school is getting athletics, drama music taken away. It should be spread out.

Has anyone given thought to consolidating services with neighboring districts?

Burke - Right now, believe it or not, there are a lot of mandates that mandate that we have our own administration, so without legislative changes, that is not possible.

Michael Nofi – It’s a great question and it is a question that whoever fills these seats for the net three years will address. There’s a lot of noise in the community and neighboring districts about how we’re going to renew some of these costs… it’s something that needs to be done at a board to board level and we’re going to need legislative help as well.

Dallon - It's important that when we do look at something like that that we also have to maintain our identity. Many years ago this auditorium was packed over what was going on in Shoreham-Wading River because as a Rocky Point resident we were allowed to use the Shoreham-Wading River library but we didn’t have a voice on the board. Consolidation is a great idea to save money but we have to be able to maintain our own identity and make sure our interests in our district are protected.

Should we move away from so much state testing or should we kind of ramp it up so we could still be competitive?

Burke – I’m not a big fan of testing. I don’t really think that a snapshot of one day in one child's life really gives you an honest picture of what that child knows or what they’re capable of.

Dallon – Not many people know this but on ELA exams the state keeps changing the set point. Last year we were so grateful that our kids had done so well on the ELA, and they walked out and the state said we’re changing the set point. So that’s like telling a child you got a 100 on the exam, and they walk out of the class and you say I’m going to make it worth 200 points now. This is a tremendous problem. Teachers are preparing these kids for what they think is going to make them successful and then the game changes.

Moscatiello - I'm not big on the state tests. I feel there's much more in our teachers teaching our kids how to function in society and I think that’s the most important thing.

Editors Note: Stay tuned to Patch in the upcoming days leading up to the election for candidate profiles of all six candidates, including video of their speeches from Thursday night.


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