The Manhasset Press posed several questions to the three candidates running for the one Manhasset Board of Education seat being vacated by BOE President, Tom Maimone, who has decided not to run for another term. Voting will take place Tuesday, May 17 at the high school gym from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Aitken: As a concerned resident and taxpayer, my decision to run for the school board grew out of my own desire to become more involved. Over the past year, as I attended board meetings and participated in deliberations as a member of the CAC Finance, I realized that through my professional experience as a restructuring and turnaround specialist, I have a background that is particularly suited to dealing with the types of issues we presently face. As a parent of three children in our public schools, I found it difficult to sit back and not become more involved in trying to tackle the issues.

Aloia: I felt compelled to run because I could no longer sit and watch our district and community become so divided. I feel it is largely because of the effects of the reassessment. I saw three out of four budgets fail. I watched constant criticism of the new board that was working so hard to satisfy all interests in the community. Fairness was giving way to anger, and it was becoming self-destructive. I feared that our lack of support for the system would drive people away--teachers, administrators and board members, until it was too late to save it from mediocrity. I began to speak out at meetings, write letters and send e-mails reminding people that the best way to effect change is by encouraging and helping the people we have empowered to lead us and to support the system. I have a vision of a system that is excellent in both education and efficiency and the belief that we are ready and able to achieve it.

Penn: The Manhasset School District has brought itself to a position where our children are being constantly outscored across the board on nearly every criterion by students in other districts. The fact that we are investing more than nearly every other district by supporting our children with one of the largest budgets and not seeing meaningful results from this investment in the education of our children drew me to this race.

Aitken: A good board member must always possess honesty and integrity and be committed to our children and our community. We continue to face unprecedented challenges that make changes inevitable in the way we operate. As we all know, some individuals function better than others in the face of challenges and change. Through my professional experience I know that, managing organizations through change requires a different approach and perspective than managing in a static or growing environment. Additionally, an effective board member needs to be independent so that they can function in a collaborative manner and build the bridges that need to be built among the diverse views in our community.

Aloia: A great question, because at any given time, leadership demands different qualities. Last year, we felt the need for good financial minds, and brought on the board someone with Wall Street experience and a CPA from a large accounting firm. Now we need someone who is a systems thinker, who recognizes the paramount importance of stability of the system and will consider each action as it effects the whole system, not just a particular issue. I hope to achieve this through collaboration with the community, board members, administrators, teachers and students, in a system of proper governance.

Penn: Manhasset needs a totally independent and decisive school board that will make every decision based upon the need to provide our children with the very best education possible. A good board member needs to listen first, evaluate the data and then formulate suggestions to pose to the community for their input before voting on key issues. A good board member needs to be able to be an effective committee member who can push for positive changes that will provide every child in Manhasset with the best education possible.

Aitken: The role of the board is to govern and to guide. In recent months the board has by necessity been more "hands-on" and too involved in issues that should be addressed by the district's administration. The superintendent is the day-to-day manager of our school district, and with a new superintendent due to start soon, the board should allow he/she to do their job of managing the educational and business aspects, while holding him/her accountable for results. The board can and should then shift its priorities to strategies, planning, policies, governance and guidance.

Aloia: The new superintendent will help restore the structure needed for the board to function as a policy-making body once again. Since we were ostensibly operating without a superintendent for the last year, the board was forced to fill the void, which they did out of their sense of responsibility to the community. With the new superintendent in place, I am confident that this board will function effectively and that I will be a good fit. I will encourage the notion that a properly functioning board must respect and support its administrators, and cannot be involved in the day-to -day affairs of every aspect of the district. The board should define the vision of the district with the community, set short-term and long-term goals, seek accountability of administrators, look for ways to better assess performance of the district and encourage collaboration.

Penn: The current school board does not represent our entire community. Manhasset was forced for the first time ever to implement an austerity budget because our school board did not provide the necessary leadership to decrease the budget properly by protecting our children's education while cutting the waste that is clearly still in our school budget.

Aitken: The unquestionable purpose of our schools is to educate our children so that they develop into well-educated, socially responsible adults who are able to contribute to our communities and our society in a meaningful way. This applies to all children, of all abilities and all backgrounds. Our children are both our future and our legacy. Our public schools are one of our community's most valuable assets and obtaining a strong education is a priority for all of our children.

Aloia: This depends on community values. I think it always means an opportunity for all Americans to have a free and appropriate education. As we have seen recently, the notion of efficiency has been introduced to our community vision as a result of the reassessment. I strongly believe, however, that we still have a culture of educational excellence in Manhasset, and that includes not only what it takes to get into good schools, but finding ways for all children to learn and grow as productive members of society. In the 21st Century, the reality of the skills needed to succeed as an American in our global economy helps define our educational purpose, as does the reality that most children go to college now.

Penn: Our schools are the vessels that transforms our children into the leaders of tomorrow and concerned, knowledgeable adults are the future of this country. The purpose of a good public education is to instill the desire to learn and to make that a life-long attribute of our children. A good public education provides our children with the necessary tools to understand their responsibility to themselves, their families and to their community and country.

Aitken: Leaving to one side the teachers' contract on the basis that it is one of the agenda items for the current year, in the coming year the focus should be on: 1. Developing a partnership with the new superintendent as he/she makes their mark on the district and builds their team. 2. Developing a plan to address continued pressures of year-over-year increases in enrollment, which includes developing a plan for our "physical assets" - to accommodate enrollment levels as well as ensure the buildings are in a safe and appropriate physical condition. 3. Improving communications and public relations within the parent community and within the broader community, to continue to gain their confidence.

Aloia: 1. Stability - We need to support our new superintendent, hire permanent administrators with the help of our interims. We need a permanent director of special education, director of mathematics, assistant superintendent of business, and athletics director. Stability with the right people in a collaborative environment will enable us to improve how we educate. 2. Enrollment Growth - Immediate and long term facilities goals must be addressed and studied again. See my answer below for details. 3. Continued Efficiency - Our community demands that we function efficiently. We must consider the effect every cut may have on the quality of education, but we cannot ignore the effects of the reassessment. Creativity is needed so we can avoid sacrifices in quality.

Penn: First we must improve the performance of every child in our school district by raising our scores across the board in all courses of study. Second, we must introduce complete transparency to our school district to provide parents with the necessary feedback to be able to judge just how well their children are doing in comparison to previous years, to each other currently and how they "truly" rank versus other school districts. Third, we must remove all waste from the school budget to ensure that every dollar spent is spent wisely to benefit our school children.

Aitken: The key word in the question is "balance." Whenever there are broadly conflicting views, the "bookend" views do not prevail. People need to feel their opinions are not being ignored, but they also have to respect the differing views of others. We are part of the same community and we need to seek a compromise, find a middle ground - but without compromising the quality of education. As I noted above, one of the top three agenda items for the board next year is improving communications and public relations within the parent community and within the broader community, gaining the trust of the community is important to achieving that compromise. Transparency and communication are two keys to gaining trust.

Aloia: I am asking that everyone accept the notion that we legally and morally have to educate our children. We all have to pay taxes, whether we are in austerity or not. Then we should recognize, as we have in the past, that it is better, both from an economic and an educational standpoint, for the community to have an excellent well-functioning system that it can be proud of, than to have a shameful dysfunctional system that cannot attract good people at any level. In order to achieve this, we have to find ways to work together and make sacrifices. In order to work together successfully, we have to listen and be respectful of one another. This process is already returning.

Penn: Each constituency has a different agenda. All parents of children attending our schools have different agendas so we need to work with everyone fairly, and honestly to provide the necessary support for all children in our schools. Residents of Manhasset who no longer have children in school want to continue to support our schools and it is incumbent upon the board to ensure that all tax dollars are spent wisely and not wasted.

Aitken: The proposed budget deserves the support of the community to vote "yes." Following last year's budget vote, the current board and the administration have worked diligently to upgrade the quality of the business office staff, to implement improvements in the planning cycle and transparency, and to propose a budget that should be more in line with the views of Manhasset's residents. According to information in recent articles in Newsday, we have one of the lowest percentage increases on Long Island. There is more work to be done, but it represents important steps in the right direction.

Aloia: This budget should bring us together. At a 4.4 percent increase, not much over an austerity budget, it is lean, and we must support it. According to Newsday, it is one of the lowest increases on Long Island (seventh lowest out of 125 districts). Maybe there is more to trim, but I would say that eliminating 30 positions is a bold start and the "turnaround" has already begun. We should not, however, dismantle the system by taking a corporate cut and slash approach; rather we should plan short and long term on how we can do things with greater efficiency. This is a school district, not a phone company, and a high stock price through drastic cuts is not our goal. It is acceptable that because of the corporate cut and slash approach, the "411" service doesn't really work any more. It is not okay if any part of our school system does not work.

Penn: The proposed budget is not acceptable to me as it currently exists. This is more of the same, by that I mean that there is visible waste to me and I don't understand why the board has not removed the very obvious waste from this budget given the current austerity budget. This budget should have been free of waste to show Manhasset that after a year on austerity the board was able to clean out the waste to put us back on track with a sound budget that everyone can proudly support.

Aitken: I am sure we can all find some area we would change in a budget that goes on for almost 20 pages, but I do not believe that is the productive way to look at this budget. I hope that our residents will take a similar view and support the budget. But the process does not stop at the voting booth - we need to institutionalize some of the reforms from this year, such as looking at the budget by each school and department, and continue to implement best practices in planning and budgeting.

Aloia: Anyone could have an opinion on how to change the budget. I respectfully will not give mine because, more important than my opinion, is the budget passing as a message to each other that we are a community again. We must support this board, and they have earned our respect with their hard work and fiscal responsibility. Regardless of my involvement or expertise, I am not so arrogant to think I can do a better job on this particular budget than the five people who spent hours and hours examining it, draft after draft, with the help of Austin Gavin, our experienced assistant superintendent of business and all the other administrators. Also, I will not second-guess the board that boldly made a statement to the community that they were listening, by proposing an unpopular budget.

Penn: Carefully... line by line, there are numerous areas that need to be trimmed to reflect actual needs of our children for an excellent education. We need to carefully rebuild this entire budget based solely upon actual verified expenses and needs not projected wants and desires to add to our spending.

Aitken: From a medium to long-term perspective, it may be time to update the demographic study, an option that was contemplated by the board earlier this year, and perhaps revisit some options that we thought we have already considered a number of years ago. From a near-term perspective, we may have fewer options: the pressures are already there at the elementary and middle school levels. For example, our 12th grade class has some 190 students, while the incoming 7th grade class is up to almost 250 students! This affects our need for classroom space as well as teaching staff as we hit maximum sizes per class.

Aloia: Very complicated question. My conclusion after studying the Bishop report of district demographics is that we have a short-term and a long-term problem. In the short-term, we will need six extra elementary classrooms (four in Munsey, two in Shelter) in 2007. Tackling the short-term enrollment problem should be one of the first issues for the new superintendent. He or she will work with our facilities staff and space planning consultant to figure out what the temporary solution is (trailers for specials, art on a cart etc.). I will challenge them to take a fresh look at the buildings to see if we are utilizing our space as efficiently as possible. Long-term there are projected increases in enrollment by about 70-77 children per year for through 2009. To absorb the increase by creating a kindergarten center will require the addition of at least 10 classrooms, whereas a 6-8 middle school will require 21 new classrooms. This would mean building. The educational component of these changes must be examined as well. We will need an updated demographic report before making a decision to build.

Penn: Currently there are 58 classes in our high school with 11 or less students in that classroom that normally would seat 20-25 students. Naturally if we, are under-utilizing our current infrastructure the school will say that we need to build more classrooms. Before we approve a bond issue for $30-$60 million dollars we owe it to everyone to verify that we have in fact maxed out our facilities before we decide to incur these massive debts.

Aitken: We need to start from the basics and explore the available options, but with the understanding that the community will not support a "blank check." We now have stronger individuals in our business office, and there are plenty of bright, talented people who live in our community. We should be able to draw on these collective resources to come up with a plan that meets residents' pocketbooks, but is not blind to the welfare of our students.

Aloia: I am in the real estate business. There must be ways we can save money through upgrading systems and equipment. Energy and lighting surveys need to be completed. We also need to examine wasteful, aging equipment. We need to gain a long-term intelligent approach to the issue and to stop ignoring it.

Penn: Architecture is a passion of mine and I think that we need to maintain our magnificent schools in the condition that they were built by true craftsman. Obviously, we need to update our schools to have the very latest HVAC, telecom, computer and internet broadband capacity to meet the challenges ahead but we need to be respectful of our heritage and not abort our historic buildings for expedience sake. Proper investment in our "plant" three school buildings is critical on an annual basis. We must perform all preventative maintenance that will save us money in the long run by not allowing small things to grow into costly problems.

Aitken: The reputation of our school district for academic excellence and high quality of education is something we must continue to preserve. While test grades are not the sole measure of a successful education, they attract attention as they are what provide comparability from one district to another. Focus falls too easily on a particular segment or program, but we must keep our eyes focused on what we are doing for the majority of our students - the students who are often referred to as the "middle child." The educational message has become muddled, and while it may be hard to communicate an educational vision through all of the noise and static, a common vision must be articulated and communicated.

Aloia: You have to have a vision of what a great education is first. To me, it is a well-rounded education that provides opportunities for all children to develop their strengths and is relevant to its time. It should encourage community support and collaboration. Once you have a vision, you need effective assessment tools. Our Report of Student Achievement and curriculum review cycles are excellent tools and can be refined further. Then you must figure out how to achieve continuous improvement in all areas. Examine what early intervention will help improve our students' ability to learn in the future. Listen to your school administrators as to what they think we need to do to compete in the 21st century. Encourage collaboration (such as we have in the Middle School). Look at what other schools are doing. Finally, look to guidance to see what is needed to get into colleges in this competitive age.

Penn: Manhasset residents expect that our schools be a shinning example of public education and I must agree that our standards of education and course curriculum must be leading edge. We need to ensure that we are always striving to improve the academic excellence of our schools by involving everyone in our community children, parents, teachers, and concerned citizens. Currently we are offering AP courses in our high school. Last year 655 students availed themselves of these courses yet only 38 percent of our children passed the final exam? We need to evaluate why so many of our children are not passing these tests and help them do so in the future.

Aitken: Athletics are a vital part of extracurricular programs. Involvement in athletics teaches lifelong lessons on teamwork, physical well-being and sportsmanship. Involving kids in programs like athletics keep them focused and engaged and they have less time on their hands to "hang out" on the streets. Athletics clearly play an important role in the college admissions process, even when vying for entrance to the top tier universities. What is a growing challenge for Manhasset is to continue to provide opportunities to students when we have a growing number of students at the secondary school. We need to continue to spend our dollars efficiently and creatively explore how we can work with parents and the Booster Club and the community to support our athletic program.

Aloia: Sports has always have been part of education and now they are just as important. If you read Kitty Klein's article in the Manhasset Press last week, she quoted recruiters from Princeton and other schools as saying that they have so many more applicants than in the past and that children must distinguish themselves with the extras. Athletics teach teamwork, commitment, winning - and losing - with grace. Also, in the 21st century, almost all children go to college, almost all play organized sports, few have "pick-up" game opportunities, many do not have a parent at home after school. In addition, coaches are paid on stipend. They are not a union employee with benefits. Thus costs can be easily determined and controlled. Finally, let's not forget that they can bring a sense of pride to all. I am not a lacrosse player, nor are my sons. When you leave town, many know Manhasset as the best lacrosse town in the country. I am proud of this.

Penn: Manhasset has one of the best athletic programs in the state and possibly the country. We need to uphold this legacy and build upon these very successful programs to involve as many children as we possibly can in these very worthwhile organized activities.

Aitken: I can say from first hand experience that I think we are especially fortunate to have the cadre of skilled and involved professional teachers that we have in Manhasset. My children have all had - and I hope will continue to have - excellent teachers. I can also say that I have been in enough business negotiations to know that you cannot know from the outside what is going on in the inside. I also know that the contract embodies many complex issues that undoubtedly touch on areas such as benefits or productivity matters, and that the document contains more than just a single sentence addressing a percentage salary increase. It would be great to have a signed contract so everyone's efforts are refocused, but the teachers all have families to support and the Board is trying to be responsive to a community that has signaled that the times we live in are different now, and all parties are undoubtedly endeavoring to do the best they can to represent their constituencies.

Aloia: I personally analyzed the contracts of 11 districts and prepared a report with the contracts subcommittee of the CAC Finance. I am an attorney. I have dealt with unions and spend my professional life negotiating contracts. I have a lot to say on the subject, but I don't think it is fair to comment on the negotiation when its confidential nature has prevented disclosure of the status. I think the necessity to keep negotiations confidential and the lack of a superintendent to lead us through this awkward dispute has made it more difficult. I want very badly to end it, raise the teachers' spirits and bring them back together with the parents.

Penn: We must renegotiate the next teacher's contract to reflect the changing needs that our schools now face. The contracts of the past are simply that and we need to craft a completely new contract with our eye on the future so that we will properly provide for our dedicated teachers while protecting the future of our community.

Aitken: We might have different views on how to gauge whether we are providing the "best education," but on whatever basis we select, we need to continue to benchmark ourselves against other districts in terms of how our students perform and look at what other districts provide, how they provide it and at what cost. We need to examine the non-curricular components of our own budget - to seek ways to balance our financial responsibilities by spending our money efficiently and wisely.

Aloia: You must first start with notion of excellence in education. First you have to set short and long-term goals based on educational demands. Then you have to re-examine your goals to see how or if they can be achieved, and what the cost will be. I want to find ways to generate income, become wiser in spending on facilities, and continue to look for economies and to look outside the district for help. I will suggest and discuss the notion with the other board members of creating a liaison with the town and the county through formation of a committee or otherwise. Within the district, I want to continue to farm the talents we have through the Citizens Advisory Committees.

Penn: There really isn't a price too high for the best education possible. In a perfect world every child would be stimulated to reach his or her fullest potential and become a lifelong learner who loves to read and discover new things every day of their life. Manhasset has always believed and still believes that we want the best possible education for our children and have voted consistently for years with ever-increasing school budgets without so much as blinking an eye. Today we are spending on average $7,000+ more than virtually every other school district yet our children are consistently being outscored by other districts spending far less than us. Obviously, spending more is not a guarantee of success. We know this because we have the quantitative data disproving this fact. What we do know is that we need to spend our money wisely so that it results in a meaningful ROI on our education spending that provides specific measurable improvements for all our children. It is not a case of how much money we are willing to spend here in Manhasset, it is a case of are we willing to challenge ourselves to spend our money wisely so that all our children benefit from every dollar that we invest in our children who are the future of Manhasset.