Schools

New Group Aims to be a Player in School Board Elections

Massapequa Committee for Education and Fiscal Responsibility backs two candidates challenging incumbents.

A newly formed group is trying to influence the debate over the future of the Massapequa school system.  

An organization called Massapequa Committee for Education and Fiscal Responsibility formed in January with the goal of lowering the tax burden on area residents. They're supporting two candidates who are challenging two incumbents in the school board elections.

"We're trying to bring change in the direction of the school board," said the group's leader Joe Garbarino.

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"Our goal is to not keep increasing the budget, not having more money in taxes."

Garbarino, a health and exercise consultant whose two children went through the Massapequa school system and graduated, feels the district needs to stop increasing spending every year.

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One way he wants to balance the budget is by eliminating administrative positions, saying the system has become bloated since he graduated in Lindenhurst in the 1970s.

"When I went to high school, we had one principal and one vice principal, we had six schools and one superintendent that ran the whole of it," he said.

In Massapequa, "There's now more than three times the administrators than when I went to school and the quality of education hasn't changed."

The group does not not favor laying off teachers, but Garbarino said he'd like to see a system in place to weed out bad ones, and believes that teachers' salaries have "gotten out of control."

They can't bring money to the district the way a person in private business can help the company's bottom line.

"A teacher that teaches well cannot generate $500,00o or $1 million," he said.

"They're not generating any revenue, there has to be a limit."

Garbarino acknowledges that lowering teachers' salaries would take time, since it would require negotiations with the teachers union, but says he feels it could be accomplished by giving the union more jobs if they'd also be willing to eliminate poor teachers.

"If I was the head of a union I would look at having good people work in my union," he said. "If I had bad employees, I wouldn't want them working in my union. There has to be some kind of evaluation. There has to be a way where both sides will work together."

Bad teachers, "milk the system" according to Gabarino, because they receive a "step-up raise" after each year they spend in the system and they also receive raises under the contract their union negotiated. They can receive a higher salary by earning extra masters credits.

He says that lowering salaries will also help in reducing pension costs, which district administrators often point to as contributing to increased spending and taxes.  Beginning in 2002, some educators who had been teaching for more than a decade, no longer had to contribute three percent of salaries into the pension fund requiring school districts to pick up the costs, but Garbarino pointed out that lowering a $150,000 salary to $75,000 would cut those costs in half.

MCEFR is supporting two candidates it thinks can start making the changes it wants: Gary Bennett and Carl Hoops. Also running in the May 17 election are incumbents Jane Ryan and board president Christine Lupetin Perrino.

He said that members suggested supporting Bennett and Hoops as candidates whose thinking was more in line with the group's.

When asked why he didn't just run himself, Garbarino said he has more plans for his organization.

"This is my first goal," he said. "My long term goal is to try to get people in the state of New York to consolidate so we can effect change in Albany."

Garbarino acknowledges that this will take time and won't happen this year, so he is not endorsing either a yes or no vote on the school budget.

For now, the group has been holding monthly meetings at

Bennett, a Massapequa resident for thirty years, was at the March meeting. He was a member of Massapequa Schools’ Budget and Finance Committee from 2004 to 2009.

 Joseph Marsh, Vice Chairman of the committee and also member of the Massapequa Schools’ Budget and Finance Committee, has known the candidate for some time.

“We had conversations about who we felt is capable of making changes,” Marsh said. “I believe that Mr. Bennett is someone that will hear our ideas.”

According to Bennett currently the populace isn’t being heard by the board which is causing less people to attend board meetings. Instead he claims that the board is basically being run on auto-pilot.

“Here you’ve got the tail wagging the dog. If I’m on the school board and I can’t convince you that my way is better than your way, then we are going to do things your way,” Bennett said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work, and I think the current board has forgotten that.”

Hoops, who was unable to attend the meeting due to the flu, has lived in Massapequa for 41 years. He has attended school board meetings for seven years and is concerned that excess spending is increasing school taxes at a scary rate.

“The way to be the best watchdog is to have people on the school board that think the same way as we do. Right now we’re not being represented as well as we think we should be,” Garbarino said.

Since the committee is only about six months old, the chairmen are still trying to get their message to the public. They have created a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account to help make people aware of their ideas and to get them involved.

“The problem is that we don’t have enough people that vote,” Garbarino said. “I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of people that feel the same way [as us], but they don’t vote.”

Garbarino said not against teachers or administrators. This committee believes that it is irresponsible to consistently increase school taxes mainly for salaries and benefits.

“It’s unattainable for people to live on Long Island if they continue this kind of a pattern. I want to have the choice of whether to live here or not,” Garbarino said. “I don’t want to have to leave here because somebody in my town or in Albany is telling me I have to pay “X” amount of taxes for something that has totally gotten out of control.”

On Thursday night Bennett and Hoops will be hosting a rally which MCEFR will attend. Garbarino hopes that by then more people will have gotten their message.

“I think we have the momentum now to really make an impact on what we’re trying to accomplish,” Garbarino said.


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