Schools

Navarra Talks Reasons Behind Mineola School Board Run

Former district council president speaks about ELA and helping middle-of-road students achieve.

Williston Park resident Patricia Navarra recently announced her candidacy for the Mineola Board of Education on the May 2013 ballot, challenging incumbent Irene Parrino for the only seat on the board that is up for election this year.

“It’s a good time for Mineola, I’d like to be part of it,” Navarra said of her announced candidacy, adding that her decision to run was more positive in nature than in more recent elections.

“I admire her willingness to serve on the board; I think I can bring something different,” Navarra said of Parrino, who has also declared her intention to run again. “She’s given her time, I think that she’s willing and happy to do so, she comes with different skill sets, she comes with different experiences. I always thought I might do this at some point in my life, this just really seems like it’s the moment to do it given where my family is, where the school is, what I can offer.”

Find out what's happening in Mineolawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

After having previously lived in Bayside, Los Angeles and Manhattan, Navarra moved to Williston Park in 1998 after having her first child.

“My family’s all in Williston Park,” she said, noting relatives within a few blocks who all went to Mineola High School.

Find out what's happening in Mineolawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Navarra grew up in in Albertson and is graduate of St. Aidan’s parochial school and Herricks High School. She obtained her undergraduate degree at SUNY Buffalo and a masters in English Literature and Creative Writing at Queens College. She is currently a professor at Hofstra University where she has been teaching for the past 13 years and lives in the Meadow Drive area.

Navarra has two children – Mary Grace, 20, a graduate of Sacred Heart High School who is currently enrolled at Marist, and Caroline, 17, a senior at Mineola High School. She has also been president of the music parents association for the past two years.

She stated that she was encouraged to run for the board since numerous parents from the Jackson Avenue School have asked her about educational issues.

“I’m an English professor so when they talk about the kids in ELA or student services, they often ask me to give them a hand, to help them out,” she said. “I work with a lot of students with disabilities in Hofstra as well so I give them a lot of friendly advice. They were very interested in my running because we talk about education all the time.”

Navarra says she is “always concerned” about how the district implements ELA as well as the common core curriculum being placed by the state.

“I know very well what it takes to succeed in college and I’d love to see us have a pre-K-12 program that was so strong and the colleges actively recruited our kids from Mineola; I see that that’s really possible.”

Previously, Navarra also served as district council president during the initial stages of reconfiguration and was a member of the Triple-C committee.

“They were very difficult times as we all remember, but I think we came out of it better than we were before,” she said. “I understand we’re in good shape financially to begin to hold onto programs and plan, we can talk about education again; it’s just a good time for Mineola. I am as proud now as I was when we committed in the CCC to come up with a creative reconfiguration that we’re in good shape financially; we’re actually building our programs now, something our neighbors unfortunately are struggling with.”

When asked about what she would like to see in the district should she be elected, Navarra pointed to a five day pre-K program which she thinks would be “a huge step in the right direction for all of our kids. Research supports that a strong, five-day pre-K saves us money in student services later on, it raises scores, I think it would be a way to attract new, young families to Mineola.”

She also spoke about the balance in the classroom of technology, literacy and critical thinking as well as teaching coding and using the iPad initiative in curriculum.

“What we don’t want to do is get away from reading, get away from what basic literacy is, taking notes, thinking critically and deeply about a text,” she said, “but using technology as a tool rather than have technology lead.”

Navarra also wants to reinstate the district’s Middle States accreditation in the buildings.

“That would also be very good for Mineola, to raise our profile and reinstate it; we’re already doing everything that the Middle States requires to have the accreditation, all we have to do is document it.”

While differentiation of instruction – making sure students on different ends of the educational spectrum, gifted and special needs – has been a major focus of the educational system in recent years, Navarra says that she wants to ensure that students in the middle are not left out or behind.

“Eighty percent of the kids in the middle; we do programs for honor students very well and we’re very good with special education and student services, but I’d like to see more rigor in the middle of the program,” she said. “The problem with it is we’ve given so much energy to the two sides of the spectrum, we haven’t paid attention to the majority of kids who are right in the middle.”

Navarra sees this area as the most room for growth in the district and since reconfiguration is complete, where the administration should concentrate efforts going forward as well as putting a much heavier emphasis on critical thinking skills which will be utilized on the college level.

“Since we’ve done such a good job pulling resources and reconfiguration, I think the next areas for growth seem pretty obvious: getting better at the stuff in the middle, getting better at pre-K, looking at pre-K-12 program and seeing how critical thinking and skills all connect from year to year,” she said. “A lot of students tend to come out of high school with this very compartmentalized idea about learning that you take a course, you get tested for it and you put it away and you forget it and you move on to the next activity, but the students never learn how these different boxes connect with each other.”

Get Mineola news on Facebook


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here