Friday, June 9, 2017
THE PULSE OF THE PENINSULA
Vol. 92, No. 23
SUOZZI TAKES AIM AT RUSSIANS PAGE 10
MTA OFFERS NO LIRR SERVICE PLAN - YET PAGE 2
$1
NIFA DEMANDS COUNTY CUTS PAGE 6
Mayor may skip forum Gilliar’s in; Bral says he’s busy BY JA N E LL E CL AUSEN North Shore Action hoped to host a mayoral forum with Village of Great Neck Mayor Pedram Bral and challenger Rebecca Gilliar this coming Wednesday at the Great Neck Library. But it looks unlikely that Bral will attend. As the director of a fellowship program in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery, Bral said he must do cases every Wednesday, save for the first of every month, and that many of these surgical appointments are made months in advance. As a result, Bral said he is booked until the end of July and needed much more advance notice. North Shore Action, a political activism group, said it plans to hold the forum from 7 to 8:30 p.m. even if only one candidate attends. The forum comes less than a week before the elections on June 20. Village of Great Neck residents, who can vote at Village Hall between noon and 9 p.m., Continued on Page 22
PHOTO BY JANELLE CLAUSEN
Sarah Moss, president of the United Parent Teacher Council, was one of the many parent leaders present at a Monday night school board meeting. She expressed some concern over the set-up of the new advisory committees, but is confident a good compromise can be reached.
Concern over ed board committees Board and parent leaders seek compromise on continuity and new membership BY JA N E LL E CL AUSEN When the Great Neck Board of Education announced plans to form a Building Advisory Committee and continue two other advisory groups, it hoped to earn more trust and involve more parents. But at a school board meeting on Monday, some people exressed concern that selecting members
by lottery for one-year terms may erode the effectiveness of the advisory boards, including 12-term Trustee Donald Ashkenase, who began the discussion. “I have a different opinion in that we benefit from some degree of continuity and I think that taking the approach we are by replacing everybody who was on the committee last year with new people loses some of the v alue of the process we have,” he said. Many parent leaders, who attended to deliver reports on their committees within the United Parent Teacher Council, agreed with
Ashkenase. They expressed concern that a lack of continuity and experience could compromise the committees’ perspective and effectiveness, defeating the purpose of properly advising the school board. Additionally, some said that with one-year terms and drawing by lottery, there may not be enough incentive to get dedicated experts to apply for a committee. In addition to the Building Advisory Committee, the panels are the Citizens Advisory Committee and the Financial Advisory Committee. The trustees reiterated one of the central points of the com-
mittees: getting more parents involved. “One of the functions that I saw was that we want to hear from them the questions they have so we know the points we’re not communicating properly,” said Trustee Lawrence Gross, referring to his time on the financial committee. “Like anything else, you know what you know.” Trustee Donna Peirez also said that if membership in these committees was not done by lottery, accusations of partiality could return, defeating one of the key purposes of the advisory committees: gaining community trust. Continued on Page 58
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