- By Dan Veaner
- News
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Click on the candidate above to read his or her interview
or click here to see all three on the Elections page
or click here to see all three on the Elections page
Last year's budget failed in the first vote, then a slightly reduced version passed. Early this year taxpayers voted down a school capital project. This year the tax rate will be 7.4% higher than last year, in part because the board is running out of reserves to draw from, and in part because of an error last year in which spending did not meet projected levels, reducing the amount of State aid that came into the district.
All three candidates either have or have had children in the Lansing schools. Iacobucci has lived here for 18 years, and currently has a child in each of Lansing's three schools, as well as a son in college. Dittman has lived here for 16 years, and his two grown daughters attended the middle and high schools. Cheatham has lived in Lansing 20 years, and has a son in middle school, and a daughter in high school. Another son graduated from Lansing High School and now studies at Syracuse University.
All the candidates have volunteered their time to participate in the school district. Iacobucci is finishing her second term on the board. Dittman participated on the Capital Project Facilities Committee. Cheatham has been active in the district, and has also worked with the Lansing Recreation Department. All three work in some aspect of education, with Dittman teaching accounting at the Cornell hotel school. Cheatham is a scientist at Syracuse University. Iacobucci teaches sociology at Wells College.
| Taking Attendance A number of people have remarked that Christine Iacobucci has missed about 40% of meetings. Iacobucci told us in her interview that she was sure she had attended at least 70% of them. "You know it’s one of those things where face time can be misleading," she added. "There are other preparatory kinds of work that board members do behind the scenes for preparation for any of the issues that are going on in the district that are sort of behind the scenes." To clarify the issue, we checked the minutes. While she shares the worst meeting attendance record with fellow member Dan Brown, the 65.2% of meetings she has made during the current school year is statistically close to the 70% she claimed in her interview, and about as close to the 40% that others have suggested. Iacobucci noted in her interview that she missed two meetings over the summer due to vacation. If you discount those two meetings, the percentage rises to 71.4%, just what she estimated. That amounts to to missing close to 1/3 of the meetings.
Abbreviations: DB=Dan Brown; SD=Sandi Dhimitri; AD=Anne Drake; CI= Christine Iacobucci, TK=Tom Keane; BL=Bonita Lindberg; GS=Glenn Swanson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The three have different personal styles. Cheatham is willing to go against accepted ideas, but likes to base his decisions on benchmarks and data. Dittman cuts to the core of issues, demanding to understand the rationale and effect of decisions before committing resources to them. Often confrontational, Iacobucci says she feels a strong sense of duty to raise questions.
While all of the candidates believe there are problems to be addressed, they all say that Lansing's teachers and staff are second to none. All are pleased with the education their children got or are getting, and they give a lot of credit to the teachers.
Over the past three weeks the Star interviewed all three candidates. Each was asked the same questions, with slight modifications because Iacobucci is an incumbent with a two-term record, while the others will be new to the Board Of Education if elected.
In our election coverage we allow the candidates to speak in their own words, transcribing the recorded interviews with minor edits: we remove the 'ums' and repetitive 'I thinks,' and occasionally move a block of the conversation up or down so that it flows better to make more sense to the reader. Other that that what you read is the candidates words as spoken.
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