Malfetano: Change needed in New Rochelle
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TwitterI was disappointed about the editorial staff’s failure to endorse candidates capable of changing the “closed shop” mentality resulting in years of dismal public participation in school elections. As a lifelong educator, administrator and attorney, I offer a clear vision for change and openness designed to encourage true community control of our schools. My opponents have offered nothing new. It is a shame this paper fails to see the need for independent voices.
I have proposed electing school board members the same way we elect our city council and mayor – by district, at the same time. This will encourage greater community involvement and save money having wasteful yearly elections. What about the idea of having school elections in November? I have shown how our school budget process needs revision. It is too vague and does not clearly allow you to “follow the money.” With a $230 million budget serving less than 11,000 students, I suggest we can provide busing for all of our lower-grade students. It is a crime to see elementary kids walking across America’s first highway, Boston Post Road, to get to Trinity Elementary. Remember, their community, the Stevenson area, had their school torn down in the 1980s by this short-sighted board. I opposed giving away and bulldozing four elementary schools back then. I was right. We had to bond millions of dollars not so many years later to build extensions to many of our schools.
We deserve change. Please, give me the opportunity to serve you and our children.
Vincent J. Malfetano
New Rochelle
Yes, I did see a young
Yes, I did see a young mother and two elementary school children crossing the busy and wide traffic-laden Route 1 the other morning. A VERY busy intersection at that time of the day, by the Sunoco and Taco Bell. In addition, they had to cross the other busy side to make the long trek down Echo Avenue to the school. I wish I could have offered them a ride. I realize walking is a healthy option, but this young family’s faces looked very stressed trying to look out for themselves and holding each others hands so tightly.
With the elimination of Dr.
With the elimination of Dr. Jack Wagner’s candidacy by the PTA/New Rochelle School Board/FUSE(the NR teacher’s union) “industrial complex,” economic conservatives and libertarians need a voice. Even though tomorrow’s vote on a budget and board vacancies is officially non-partisan, Republicans, independents and mainstream Democrats who are interested in financial accountability, operational efficiency and ethical conduct by our public servants are entitled to an able and principled advocate, and in Mr. Malfetano they will find one.
New Rochelle’s political establishment of traditional political parties has declared School Board politics and economics off-limits to their customary partisan scrutiny (even though our “part-time mayor has endorsed a library board candidate and local Republican officeholders have studiously avoided antagonizing local PTAs in hope of maintaining their political viability). Principled political observers who remain in our city can afford no such luxury.
With the goal of combating the incessant growth of local tax burdens, and maintaining just a modicum of integrity and self-respect for our community, New Rochelle voters tomorrow have an opportunity to state loudly and clearly to the media and political elites that have monopolized the public education “conversation” and hampered and throttled the future prospects of our young men and women;
“Enough is enough! You have had your say and you have had your way, and you have nothing to show for it but a school budget approaching one-quarter of a billion dollars, an administrative bureaucracy awash in deficit spending, cronyism, waste, corruption, labor union-style school-yard bullying of dissenting parents and taxpayers, and an unprecedented pay and benefit scheme almost tailor-made to discourage pedagogical accountability.”
Other Westchester communities have witnessed budget cuts and tax reductions; voluntary teacher and administrator givebacks and financial gifts to school administrations, even (perish the thought!) educational innovation in the form of charter schools, adoption of dress- and ethics- codes and teaching-unit decentralization. And what has North Rochelle’s professional educators offered us in these troubled times of negative economic growth and recession, parental unemployment and family dislocation? Nothing, but more of the same (and yet
another 3.5 % salary increase this past year for teachers and administrators thanks to last year’s labor contract “extension”).
Tomorrow, New Rochelleans of principle will enthusiastically vote “no” to the school board’s insultingly rich, unjustifiably glutted and plainly unexamined spending plan. Let the bureaucrats come back with a more thoughtful one, or let the successor document be defeated also. Then, let them explain the chicanery and dishonesty behind the state legislature designed “contingency budget” that will then ensue.
These same people of virtue will enthusiastically say “no” to the establishment and its teacher’s union/hand- picked slate of candidates also; agents of the status quo and “more of the sameness.” They will vote for a true independent and a genuinely inventive thinker for election to the school board, Vince Malfetano.
If New Rochelle’s silent majority of responsible voters do not stand up to the organization bosses and establishment retainers, and demand excellence, accountability and economy in school operations, then who will? And if these voters of conscience do not express themselves clearly and strongly, then how will the board ever comprehend its responsibility to show courage and resolve when it faces FUSE negotiators this coming June 30 when the present incomprehensibly-timed labor contract expires?