Voting for school board trustees and the district's 2003-2004 budget will take place in Hicksville on Tuesday, June 3. Two seats on the board will expire this year, including Pat Love's and Peggy Theis'. Both Love and Theis are seeking re-election and both races are being contested. Dolores Garger is running against Love and Gus Costa is running against Theis.

The following are profiles of the four candidates:

A member of the board of education for almost eight years, Pat Love has chaired the Curriculum and Policy Committees and is currently holding the office of secretary. She was an active member of the Woodland and high school PTAs, serving as council treasurer, vice president and president of both, and also represented the PTA on the task force.

Love was the original parent representative on the committee for the Compact for Learning (site base team) and has served on various committees including membership, legislative, health and safety and fundraising. As chairperson of the Curriculum Committee, she was involved with the review and adoption of the nine period day as well as several new advanced placement courses for the high school. At her request, a new reading and math series was researched and implemented for kindergarten through fifth grade.

As a member of the board, Love believes there are several important issues confronting the Hicksville School District at this time, including rising operating costs. "Every effort must be made to maintain a fiscally responsible budget. Due to cuts in state aid, unfunded mandates and rising contractual obligations, members of the board of education must be prepared to work with administration to provide taxpayers of this community with a fair and balanced budget," said Love, a 33-year resident of Hicksville.

She added, "We must continue to lobby our legislators in order to address the problems of unfunded mandates and the cuts made in state aid. Contracts should be negotiated with the best interests of the community in mind and not under the pressure of special interest groups."

According to Love, the state standards are also a major issue of concern at this time. "In order to provide out children with well-rounded education, the board must provide administration and staff with the necessary educational tools. Because of our ever-growing and diverse student population, curriculum and programs are and should be reviewed on a continual basis," she said. "Hicksville has many new and enthusiastic teachers who are given the opportunity to develop their techniques through staff development courses. We must encourage them to take advantage of this program in order to improve their skills and to help our students meet and excel the state standards."

If re-elected, Love said she will continue to stress student performance and staff accountability. "Administration has already presented the board with a review of plans to improve test scores and programs at the middle school and high school," said Love, adding that implementation of the bond referendum is also important. "The implementation of the bond referendum to maintain a safe and comfortable educational environment for students and staff is also a goal that I would like to see completed."

As a member of the board, Love states she has "demonstrated an ability to make difficult decisions in the face of adversity and in the future I will continue to make decisions based on reliable information, facts and research."

Dolores Garger is a lifelong resident of Hicksville and a product of the Hicksville School District. She has a degree in secretarial science (with a legal concentration) from SUNY Farmingdale and earned additional credits in the field of business management from C.W. Post College and Adelphi University. Her work experience includes bookkeeping, insurance claims, employee training and data entry. For the past 12 years, Garger has been a "stay-at-home" mom.

Since her son's entrance into kindergarten in l996, Garger has been actively involved with the Lee Avenue PTA, having served on and/or chaired over 20 committees and devoted four years of service to the executive board, including one year as corresponding secretary and two years as co-president. Over the past several years, she has regularly attended board of education meetings, served on district hiring committees and was a member of last year's Bond Advisory Committee. At present, she is recording secretary for the Lee Avenue PTA and corresponding secretary for the Hicksville Council of PTAs.

If elected, Garger would like to see relations between teachers and administrators improved. "There is a responsibility on the teachers and the teacher's union as well as administration and the board to work towards a better relationship," she said.

Out of Nassau County's 56 school districts, Hicksville is currently ranked as the 54 lowest paying. According to Garger, something needs to be done to change that. "We are not a poverty stricken district," she said. "With the next teacher contract there needs to be a little bit more than an olive branch offered each time a contract comes up."

To do so, Garger said the board should look into doing something similar to what Brentwood School District did when establishing their salaries. To determine a "fair mid-ground," the district based their salaries on an average of the five surrounding communities. "As much as we'll never be Jericho, we're not that far removed off the map," she said. "If someone is going to travel in from Stony Brook or Medford and gets an offer from Jericho and Hicksville, that extra five minutes up 107 is not going to make much of a difference."

As a trustee, Garger would also like to see the district's tentative plan for more parental responsibility put into play. "The plan is to identify children at risk," she said. "[In doing so,] parents would be held accountable for getting that extra assistance to their children, whether it be through the school or on the outside."

If elected, Garger said she will make a commitment to the Hicksville community to work responsibly toward fulfilling present needs and future goals. "We need to give our children the best that Hicksville can afford-the best teachers, programs, textbooks, facilities, and policies," she said. "With the state of education today - increased mandates, decreased funding, stricter standards, etc. - our children, more than ever before, need advocates who will work on their behalf in all areas that encompass their educational years. I will work with an open mind, considering each issue on its merit."

A member of the school board for the past nine years, Theis has been an active PTA member and was former president of the Old Country Road School PTA and Hicksville Council of PTAs. During her tenure with the board, Theis was involved with the reopening of the East Street School and development and passage of last year's bond referendum.

As a member of the school board, Theis worked actively to raise the fun balance from $13 to the highest legal fund balance possible, two percent of the budget. "The fund balance is important for many reasons [in that] it lowers our borrowing costs when the district had a higher rating and is available for unforeseen emergencies, such as a state aid cut in the middle of a school year," she said.

She added that the school district needs to continually look for new ways to keep budget growth stabilized in the wake of declining state aid revenue and the shift by Nassau County of the tax burden from commercial properties to residential.

To do so, she suggests keeping legislators apprised of the district's situation on an ongoing basis. "Bearing in mind that deferral and state mandates must be followed, I favor careful examination of our special education program [and] support the superintendent's proposal to look at classification of students. We should be able to help children without entailing extraneous expenses that are not cost effective."

Since many teachers who served the district since the 1960s and 1970s have retired in the past 10 years, Theis believes Hicksville needs to "continue providing staff development focused on state standards, better teaching techniques and improvement of test scores." With science, math and foreign language teachers' positions extremely competitive and difficult to fill, Theis said she "will continue to advocate hiring the best candidate for these positions, which would mean hiring at a higher salary step."

She added, "Most of our teachers currently receive yearly increases of at least four percent and many of our staff are receiving additional increases based on educational credits they have accumulated. I would continue to act responsibly on behalf of our taxpayers and students when negotiating future contracts."

Gus Costa, a resident of Hicksville for the past 16 years, has a bachelor's degree in English from Hofstra University and has worked in the travel industry for 20 years. He served as a girls softball coach for the Hicksville Baseball Association (HBA) for nine years and was on the board of HBA as director of girls' softball for six years. For the past three years, Costa has served on the board of the Hicksville Youth Council Boys' and Girls' Club, acting as the board's vice president for the last two years.

If elected, Costa said things he would work towards establishing a mentoring program and hiring of a director of technology so that the district can establish its own website. In addition, Costa would like to see the salaries of Hicksville teachers re-evaluated.

"We have to look at how we are spending money and extend that to how we pay our teachers," he said. "How do our kids improve when we keep losing our best teachers to higher paying jobs? In the last three years, [the district] received over one-hundred resignations. We can't keep losing teachers and expect it not to have an effect."

Costa would also like to see a more open relationship between the board and the community. "We have a lot of important organizations in Hicksville and too often, so many of the different groups tend to do their own thing and don't come together enough," he said. "I would like to see the school board establish a liaison committee with an advisory board that would help get more people involved."

Costa added that if the board was more community-friendly, more members of the community would come forward to voice their concerns. "We need to be more responsible to the people in the community," he said. "If people truly felt that their concerns were very important, more people would definitely come forward when they felt they needed something addressed."

In addition, Costa would like to see Hicksville work with other school districts throughout Nassau County. "We need to go to other districts, find out what they are doing and to share ideas," he said.

As a member of the board, Costa said he would "work with the school administration and ... all groups in our community to give our children the best education possible."