Coalition for Glen Cove

Meeting of 25 October 2010  at St. Paul's Episcopal Church

School board vice-president Gail Nedbor-Gross, Coalition president Helen Kotzky, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joseph Laria, Glen Cove Teachers’ Association president Karen Ferguson, and school board member Joel Sunshine at the Coalition for Glen Cove meeting

Dr. Joseph Laria, superintendent of the Glen Cove schools, was the guest speaker at the October Coalition for Glen Cove meeting. Dr. Laria’s mother came from a town not far from Glen Cove’s sister town, Sturno, Italy. His parents, although they spoke little English when they came to this country, revered education; his older sister was the first woman in the extended family to go to college. Dr. Laria taught biology and chemistry, earned a Ph.D. degree in educational management (he wrote his thesis on how incremental progress creates its own momentum), became a school district superintendent when he was only 35, and has spent 46 years as an educator.

Dr. Laria started by saying that being a member of the school board is one of the most important roles in society. The school board sets the policies that the administration and teachers carry out. The current Glen Cove school board members do their homework carefully and work hard to make sometimes quite difficult decisions. One thing that Glen Cove needs is continuity of leadership and purpose. The average term of school superintendents in the United States is only 2.4 years. During his time in Glen Cove he would like to emphasize student achievement, values, expectations, discipline, and deportment. Small gradual changes in the schools can add up to large changes in the school district and improvements in the way the community views the schools.

Only a small fraction of community members, and even of parents, vote in school budget elections. In order to have a larger public involvement in the schools it is good to have open discussions of problems and policies in community committees, meetings, and forums. In the community and in the country lack of information, anger, frustration, and fear lead voters to make irrational decisions. Dr. Laria encouraged us all to stay informed, attend board meetings and forums, serve on committees and rally our support behind our schools which are a reflection of our community.

Joel Sunshine remarked that parents have said that the new sixth grade honors program is academically rigorous and is phenomenal; the stringed instruments program started several years ago in only the third grade and now extends from third to sixth grade. Incremental changes do make a difference.