McGrath Announces School Board Reelection Bid

Trustee John McGrath officially announced his reelection bid for another term on the board after the Mineola Patch broke the news that fellow resident on the May 15 ballot.

Speaking before the start of the March 29 board meeting at the , McGrath responded to several of Barnett’s comments in the candidacy announcement, specifically that he has “lost touch” with the community and “fought (reconfiguration) the whole way.”

Candidates for the Mineola Board of Education cannot run for a specific seat, rather the top two candidates who receive the most votes would fill the seats. The two seats up for election this year are currently occupied by McGrath and sitting board president Christine Napolitano. Barnett has come out in support of Napolitano as well as Terence Hale and William Hornberger, who were . McGrath has served on the Mineola Board of Education for the past 15 years.

Describing the claim that he was against reconfiguration as “inaccurate,” McGrath said that he “disagreed with the board’s proposals for reconfiguration. I made different proposals for reconfiguration which would have maintained all our neighborhood elementary schools.”

McGrath had proposed that a to see if the two districts could share a middle and high school, for which he received a great amount of backlash and criticism from board members.

McGrath went on to say that his being out of touch with the community was also inaccurate, citing that he opposed the while Barnett supported them. .

“I’ll leave it to the residents of the school district to determine who is or who is not out of touch with them,” McGrath said, reading from his prepared remarks, adding in reference to the passed budget: “However, if you count the number of ‘wins’ it’s McGrath 2 and Barnett 1. Two out of three ain’t bad. If that’s out of touch so be it.”

In an e-mail to Mineola Patch, Barnett responded to McGrath’s statements by saying that his “assertion that I supported the second bond proposal is patently false. I believe he owes the people of this community some due diligence before making such claims. While I did not support the bond, I did support the opportunity given to the voters to choose for themselves whether not moving the 5th and 8th grades was worth the cost. That’s democracy at work”

McGrath commended Barnett for announcing his candidacy, stating that he would “look forward” to a campaign and the voter’s decision.

No announcement from Napolitano was made during the March 29 meeting.