Archive: News

Christine IacobucciI've been living in Lansing for almost a quarter of a century.  When I first moved here I came to take a position at Ithaca College.  My husband was taking a job with the University of Buffalo.  At that time I had one of my four children -- I brought a baby in tow.  As you can imagine, starting a career and having a new family, and having a husband who was working in another city presented all sorts of challenges.  But after living here for just a few years it became very clear to me that Lansing was a place that I wanted to live and raise my family in.

In fact, much to the dismay of my husband and a lot of family members, at one point in time we were actually living out of our car with holiday presents in black garbage bags because I really wanted to reside in Lansing.  One of the main reasons I wanted to do that was because of the schools here.

According to the New York State School Boards Association, 'these are challenging times for public education.  School boards are seeking men and women who find excitement and satisfaction in confronting tough challenges, and working collegially to overcome them.  The board of education is a uniquely American institution.  It keeps the country's public schools flexible and responsive to the needs of their local communities.  A member of a board of education in New York State takes on one of the most important responsibilities that can be assigned to any citizen: helping to plan the education of the community's youth.'

In Lansing we have a strong tradition of public participation at school board meetings, which with very explicit and limited exceptions, must be open to the public.

While the board and the Superintendent are responsible for working on Lansing goals and making decisions, our community often turn out as a public.  And while the board and Superintendent will be praised and blamed for the content of decisions as well as the process by which they are made, our community members have expressive rights about district issues, and should have the moral expectation that their views will be heard and treated seriously.

This past school year, students, parents and guardians, district employees and community members have been treated with respect and appreciation.  I am running for School Board because I believe strongly in this process and want to continue to be part of it.  Thank you.

Karen McGreeveyI hail from the south.  I moved here in 1994 to live in Tompkins County and work at Ithaca College.  I can now say I've lived here 19 years.  So I'm a southerner and a northerner.  I guess that truly makes me an American.

I am very honored, humbled and privileged to be here today and to be running for school board in Lansing Central School District.  I believe my life experiences, my professional experiences, my heart and my head that have all come together to compel me and inspire me to run for school board to represent you.

You can read my candidate statement in the booklet that was mailed out.  I'll highlight a few things.  I really want to pull out my teacher bag that I have with me.  My education has been in education.  I went to high school in Richmond, Virginia.  I went on to Baylor University to study elementary education.  I taught middle school in both Houston, texas and Richmond, Virginia.

After some soul searching I decided to leave the teaching profession to pursue a masters degree at Florida State University in educational administration.  I love college kids.  I had a phenomenal college experience and I wanted to give back, so I prepared to work on a college campus.  That brought me to Ithaca College.  I met my husband, went to London, came back, worked at Cornell University.  Ten years ago we started a family.

So for the last ten years I've been CEO, CFO, nutritionist, taxi driver, chauffer coach, reader to three adorable kids, Liam, Katie and Maggie.  They are all at the elementary school this year, and it's been a phenomenal year to have them all there.  this is the only year they'll all be together.

I believe the strengths in our district are an unwavering commitment to student learning, development and success, comprehensive mission, vision and strategic plan, a positive relationship with our community, fiscal efficiency and use of current resources, and ultimately all of the people of this community who make this educational system as strong as it is.

So why am I running for school board?  I want to help our current school board members, Superintendent Pettograsso, and her leadership team, our school district's faculty, staff employees, our families, and ultimately our children achieve their fullest potential.  My goal, if elected, is to support, strengthen and sustain the Lansing Central School District so that our students, our families, our teachers, our staff, and our overall community can thrive.

When my daughter Katie was two years old and I went for a well-visit, the doctor said, 'She's thriving, not surviving.'  That's what I want for our community.

Walker ReynoldsThank you to the League of Women Voters and the PTSO, Dorothy Debbie for putting this on tonight, and to the board for putting the breaks on for an hour in the middle of the evening so that we could have an opportunity to talk to the community.

I've lived here pretty much my entire life.  I moved to Lansing in 1982, and with the exception of a five year stint in the '90s I've been a Lansing resident my entire life.  My heart pumps blue and gold blood.

My favorite place in the entire world is UC Point (Salt Point).  When I was in college I was living in North Carolina.  I used to drive back here just to get pizza at King Ferry Pizzaria and then go down to UC Point to remember what home felt like.  The reason Lansing means so much to me is this town really saved my life.  More specifically, the school district.  The reason I'm running is because I couldn't talk anyone else into doing this job, to be honest with you.

Some of the people that I asked to run are in this room today, who I think are probably more qualified than I am.

I've spent the last two years immersed in the problems in our district.  I'm a data guy.  I'm an electrical controls engineer at Borg Warner.  Primarily my job is that companies bring me in to analyse processes and then improve them.

I'm a change agent.  My job is to make people feel uncomfortable.  that's what I do for a living and I like to think I'm really good at it.  My Dad used to say that the guy or gal who busts through the glass ceiling is going to get cut up a little bit. 

When I started this journey two years ago I was really upset with the school board.  Incredibly upset.  I have the emails to prove it.  I was upset with the administration, I was upset with the business administrator.  I was upset with everyone, because I felt like many Lansing residents feel, that the school is a big black hole where your tax dollars go to die.  That's what folks feel like.  There's a large contingent in this community that feels that way.

That couldn't be further from the truth.  The truth is that Lansing is an amazing community.  We are blessed to have the most amazing faculty in the entire state.  When you look at what makes Lansing great it is the people.  it's the folks who lived here their entire lives.  It's the transplants who moved here from Richmond.  It's the educators who have dedicated their lives to dealing with people like me, antagonists who have expressed displeasure with the fact that I've got to spend four or five thousand dollars a year on my taxes, or some people I hear $20,000 on their taxes.

I'm here to ask for your vote primarily because I'll ask tough questions and there won't be anyone at the table who understands the issues better than I do, that's for sure.

Lucia ScioreWhat special skills or experience do you have that make you an ideal school board member?








Walker ReynoldsThat's a good question.  For the last two years what I have done is spent a lot of time talking to local politicians: Kathy Miller, the Town Supervisor and Scott Pinney before that, the Tompkins County IDA when they were analyzing AES, Barbara Lifton and her Chief of Staff Linda Smith over the last couple of months.  Primarily what I do behind the scenes is I try to get down to the crux of the real issue.  then I pass on what I find to the school board or the administrators.  I meet with Mary June, Dr. Grimm, Chris Pettograsso.

The truth is that I'm a data guy.  I'm a numbers guy. One of the things I think the board is missing is that person who is willing to crunch the numbers and stay up until two, three in the morning analyzing data.  That's the unique skill I would bring to this board that I think sets me apart from the group.

In general I oppose 'group think' so I am a big fan of playing 'devil's advocate' and I think we're in need of that.

Karen McGreeveyI think the combination of my work experience and my life experience combined is unique.  I have been a classroom teacher and taught Middle School.  So I've been in the trenches and I know what it's like.  I know how difficult it is.  I know how rewarding it can be.

I have worked on a college campus.  I have worn many hats as a counselor, as an event planner, as a fundraiser, and in my last four years at Cornell as an admissions counsellor.  Over the last ten years I've worked part time reading college applications.  I've kept a window into the world of public and private education across our nation and our world to see what students are studying, to see what students' dreams are.  I think that's a unique perspective that I bring to help make sure that our district is striving to be better than it can be.  We can always be better than we are right now.

Christine IacobucciI don't know if I have very unique characteristics.  What struck me about the three of us is that we all three care so very deeply about children and about this community.  I think there is a lot of similarity among us.  What people may not know is that school was a tremendous struggle for me.  I was not one of those successful children in the elementary school grades.  It was really tough.

I came from a big family and my family was struggling financially.  They had very limited resources in terms of money and time.  Some how, though some series of miracles I not only made it thought the school system, but I became very successful and became a professional educator.  I am a mother of four children, all of whom are different and differently skilled.  I am very proud of each and every one of them.

So I appreciate differences.  I appreciate the level of commitment that educators share with children, and make potentially rough stories turn into successful ones.

Lucia ScioreDo you have any particular issue that is especially important to you?









Karen McGreeveyI would like our Lansing Community to turn our focus outward, and not inward.  I think it's easy in these economic times for all of us to feel stress and pressure and angst.  We have to figure out where we're going to direct that stress and frustration.  Instead of directing it at one another I would much rather direct it at Albany.

(We should) work with Albany in a cooperative way, but say 'we are here as a strong school district and a strong community.  You're not helping us thrive.  You're not helping us be the best we can be.  We want you to work with us so that we can provide the very best education for our students.'

So I think it's important that we all come together as parents, faculty, administrators, community members, town representatives and really work with our legislative representatives to make a positive change happen.  Because ultimately what matters is education.  We have to stand up and fight for the education of our children.

Christine IacobucciI am really concerned about all of these extra unfunded mandates.  I'm constantly perplexed that in the United States we think that in eight hours all school districts can fix the social problems that we have, and if they don't the people who are working on it aren't qualified or they don't care or they want too much money for what they're doing.

That si the wrong way to think about it.  There is something systemically that we're not doing the right way.  If it's happening all across the country then it can't be any one of our faults.  There has got to be some kind of systemic problem.

And I agree with Karen. I think one of the biggest stressors is all of this state standardized testing that produces anxiety in our kids so that they don't even want to come to school, and learning becomes a chore instead of something fun.  The extra pressure that is put on our teachers... the extra pressure that is put on our principals... we can't even allow them to have a family life or to be in the school buildings and show the students that they care about them, and that's why they went into their profession.  They're too busy addressing these new things that we have: APPR, etcetera.

I find that extremely frustrating.  I think advocacy is key, as Chris (Pettograsso) said.  It's time for us to push back.

Walker ReynoldsI'm an unabashed advocate for the disadvantaged.  I sit on the high school shared decisions team and the district shared decisions team.  I started both of those meetings by saying in the interest of full disclosure I am here to be an advocate for the disadvantaged.  The advantaged have plenty of advocates, my kids included.  I have two boys in the elementary school, nine and five.  I brought them along today to enjoy this moment.  Please don't call CPS on me!

The issue that's nearest and dearest to me is the fact that the disadvantaged are those who are getting lost in all of these unfunded mandates.  We have Common Core and we have APPR.  In theory APPR is supposed to be a wonderful concept, right?  We hold teachers and principals accountable for the success of students, right?  Their success or failure.

In fact, what actually happened is we take the administrators away from leading the school district, and they spend all their time focussed on evaluating teachers and principals.  They we drive our students crazy preparing for exams.  We drive our teachers crazy worrying about whether they're going to be labeled ineffective, partially ineffective, etcetera.

The truth is we can leverage the resources we have in the district to focus on what really matters, and that is the fact that a high tide rises all boats.  We don't focus on that.  Even in our community, I feel in Lansing Central School District that we are under-serving the underprivileged.  That is just a simple reality.

All the cuts we have in the district, they target everyone, but they disproportionally impact the disadvantaged.

Lucia ScioreHow will you encourage input from the community to insure their concerns are heard?









Christine IacobucciI'm so glad to hear that question.  I think that's something that we've been working on very hard.  It's very easy to push out your message.  To have broadcast media, to have the district bulletin, and the Web site, and signage -- it's very easy to get the message out.

What's more difficult is to find ways to include all aspects of our community and engage them in becoming more participative members of the community.

One of the things I would like to see us do is actually reach out and invite people in, through word of mouth.  I know that sounds kind of primitive in this day and age of technology, but to get a personal invitation to people who feel disengaged... or some people might feel frightened or they might feel as though nobody really wants them to come into the building because of what they might do for a living or how they might look.

We have to invite those people and work in very active ways to do that.

Walker ReynoldsThe reason I care about the disadvantaged is I was a disadvantaged kid going to school here in Lansing in the '80s and early '90s.  I graduated in '92.  I can tell you that I'm the first person in my family to get a college degree.  I was able to do that because of the support of teachers here.  The home that I live in today, I bought from Libby Pinel.  She was my God Mother -- I call her my God Mother because God must have sent her to me to save my life the way she did.

My parents... my Dad I don't think ever set foot inside the school one time.  I don't think he ever set foot inside the elementary school, middle school or high school.  He still lives around here to this day.  Most of my aunts and uncles and the folks I grew up with out there in a mobile home on Lansing Station Road... they were terrified to come here.  For me to walk into the front door of these schools is very easy.  I just walk in unabashedly, but there are  lot of folks who are terrified to come here ad partake in what we do here.

So what I do, I'm a proactive communicator.  I reach out to a broad cross section of the community through social media... this is what I've been imploring the school board to do for the last year and a half.  To be proactive as opposed to reactive.  Stop using acronyms all the time.  It confuses people.  CPI and APPR and CC...

In order to get community members who wouldn't normally participate we need to speak to everyone's level and we have to act proactively.

Karen McGreeveyThree things come to mind to encourage involvement: to encourage people to voice their opinions, their concerns, their hopes, their needs; to encourage people to vote; and to encourage people to volunteer.

We know that children are successful when their families are actively engaged in supporting them.  That may be showing up at school or behind the scenes. How can we as a district not only help every child reach their full potential, but help every family?

Therein sometimes lies the gap.  I'll be the first to admit it: I became a parent and didn't know what in the world I was doing.  Now I've been a parent for ten years and I can now attest OK, I kind of have a clue as to what I'm doing and have some confidence.

For all of us raising kids is the hardest job in the whole wide world.  I really think that if we as a community can help our parents and our families be the best that they can be at educating their children, then it's a great partnership.

Lucia ScioreCould you tell how Lansing could meet the state average of $9,795 cost per pupil.  Right now we're above it by $2,000 per student.









Walker ReynoldsLet me qualify my answer by saying that if you only want to spend the state average per student then what you're going to get is the state average education.  The simple reality is that we are an elite school district.  All of us benefit from the fact that we are an elite school district.  I was doing some numbers: I looked at Tompkins County and I looked at who are the schools we should be comparing ourselves to?

We should be comparing Lansing to Skaneateles, Manlius, DeWitt Jamestown, Pittsford, Cazenovia.  Those are our peers.  The reality is there are two things that we have going for us that those districts don't have going for them.  The first thing we have going is the quality of education we get relative to the number of kids that we have in the district who qualify for free and reduced lunch is exceptional.  We have one in five kids in our district who qualify for free or reduced lunch.  And yet we still produce an education that is equivalent to Skaneateles' where one in 20 kids qualify for free and reduced lunch.

The simple reality is when you look at what we pay for administrative (costs) we squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of every dollar we are spending on our education here in Lansing.  I promise you, and I challenge this to any taxpayer, I do it all the time.  We are getting a massive bang for our buck based on what we spend here in the district.  And we have worked really, really hard -- everyone -- faculty, staff, administrators and the community -- to build what we have here.

So that $11,000 we're paying per student, if you take the $26 million and divide it by the thousand students we have here, it's actually way more.  The way the state calculates what we're paying per student -- it doesn't jive anyway.  It's similar to the two percent tax cap, so the truth is we're actually paying way more per student and so is every other district.

But the truth is we get an exceptional education for that $11,000 we're paying per student and I believe it's worth it.

Christine IacobucciI guess I would answer the question a little differently.  I don't want to have to do that and a lot of other people don't want to have to do that.  It shouldn't depend on where somebody lives, the quality of education that we give them.  There are organizations like the Campaign for Fiscal Equity that are working really hard so that a child who lives in a poor, rural area should get the same education as a child that lives in a pretty wealthy suburban area.  That education should be the same as a child that lives in the poorest section of New York City.

We shouldn't have to be doing this, and this is what I mean about the push back:  the system is broken and we are not getting or giving equal and fair education to all of our students from all of our families.

So I would say the direction that our district is taking and that the New York State School Boards Association is taking and that the superintendents and principals are taking is to let our government know that we need to invest in our children's education.  And it shouldn't have to fall on the backs of local taxpayers.

Karen McGreeveyI would echo what the other two candidates have said.  I fundamentally believe that it's important that we invest in the education of children.  In New York State I have learned, after meeting with Barbara Lifton and others, that New York State is the third wealthiest state in our nation, but we are number one in inequitable spending in education.

It's not right.  It's truly not right that we have so much wealth in this state but there's so much inequality across our state in funding public education.  Like my friends here, because we've had a lot of conversations together, especially in these last four months, it truly is my belief that education is the next civil rights movement in our nation.

I am committed to making sure that our nation, our state, and our local community stands up in support of children, families, teachers, schools and education.  I was inspired by Wes Moore, who spoke at Cornell this winter.  He was a Martin Luthor King Jr. designated speaker.  He said, 'In the words of Martin Luthor King Jr. our lives begin to end when we stop fighting for things that matter.'

Our kids matter. Their education matters.  I think what we're spending now is critical and we may need to spend more.

Lucia ScioreI understand that there is a two page document online describing the openness requirements in board meetings and decision making.  Are you familiar with that, and if not will you read it so you will keep it in mind when making board decisions?






Christine IacobucciI'm not exactly sure of what two page document this is, but I have worked very closely in the past with the Committee On Open Government in New York State.  I have worked with Mr. Bob Freeman, who is the director of that committee, and I have worked very hard to understand the Open Meetings law as well as the Freedom Of Information Law.  Those aspects of our government are critical to democracy.  So I will read this two page document.  I'll be as up to snuff as possible because transparency and inclusiveness is extremely important to me.

Karen McGreeveyI'm not familiar with that document.  What I'm learning as I am doing my homework preparing for tonight or preparing to possibly be elected is that I feel equipped to be a board member but there is a lot of training that I will be receiving if I am elected.  That training and mentoring from other board members that I will need and look to you to help me be an effective board member so I can understand the document and how it applies to my role as a board member and what I need to do to insure open, transparent information between the board, district, and our community.

Walker ReynoldsI am familiar with the document and I am well versed in the Open Meetings law.  My personal belief is that when it comes to deciding whether you should go into executive session or not you should always err on the side of openness.  Fundamentally what that actually gets back to is the element of trust.  The truth is if the community trusts the school board then they're going to trust that the decisions they make when they talk in private about personnel matters and what have you is justified.

The short answer is yes.

Lucia ScioreThere is a lot of emphasis on standard tests that put a lot of stress on teachers and students.  Do you agree with this emphasis?  If not do you have any ideas on how to reduce this emphasis?








Karen McGreeveyI taught school in Texas in the early '90s.  One of the reasons I left teaching was because of testing.  I felt I could not be a creative teacher.  It was difficult to feel like I had to teach to the test.  So it's a personal question and a good one because testing's important.  We need to evaluate our children and have benchmarks to know they are reaching objectives.  And we need to have objectives and we need to have goals and we need to make sure they are making progress.  So I think testing is important, perhaps a necessary evil. 

How do we then work with something that's important but possibly robbing our students and our teachers of a true education?

That  I would need to learn more about, and how I could work as a board member with our leadership team and our teachers to better understand from their perspective, because they do it every day... why is testing important?  Why do we need it?  What are the pros and the cons of it?  What can possibly do to change it.

Christine IacobucciThis past weekend was the New York State Music Association's festival.  They changed it from being a competition to a festival, only it's still a competition.  One of the unfortunate experiences I had being there was to see how nervous and scared and stressed those students are to sing.

Which is an artistic expression.  Something seems very wrong about that for me.  The same is true about how I feel about learning.  You don't have to get a child to learn.  It's fun.  It comes to us naturally.  So when you change it to being something that's stressful and you;re looking for a mark on a piece of paper to tell you that you did it well, there's something wrong with that.

You can always say it's a problem.  We've all been experiencing this problem.  What's the solution?

Over the last couple of years a lot of attention has been brought to Finland.  This article says, 'How do Finnish kids excel without rote learning and standardized testing?'  So I would very much like to see what FInland is doing.

Two quotes from here: 'If there is no standardized testing students can focus on real learning and teachers don't have to worry about preparing their kids for assessments.  Paradoxically if you want to be more competitive economically you have to be more collaborative educationally.  This starts in the classroom.  Teaching the basic skills and the habits of cooperation.'  There is a lot of literature out there.  I think we need to look at what the Finns are doing.

Walker ReynoldsThis is the geek in me coming out.  As an engineer I analyze data so I want metrics that I can track.  When I was initially reading about Common COre -- I get most of my information from the New York TImes, and then from NYSED and what have you -- but when I was originally reading about Common Core a couple of years ago the thing that made me support Common Core was the fact that 90% of teachers in New York State supported the concept of common core learning.

But then you go to APPR.  APPR is the testing -- how we set the metric and we want to measure success.  I'm kind of OK with that, but I'm not OK with the implementation.  In effect what we've done is we've robbed resources in an already difficult financial time.  We're cut 40-some faculty and staff positions over the last four years.

So we've already cut to the bone and APPR has made it more difficult for teachers to focus on constructivist learning.  After I graduated from college I spent two semesters studying education, and after my first observation I realized I'm not cut out to be a teacher.  They're saints and I'm not.

What, in effect, has happened is we have taken the power out of teachers' hands to cultivate learning in the classroom.  Now teachers feel the pressure to teach to the test.  We didn't even talk about SLOs.  We're only talking about standardized testing and learning objectives when there isn't a clear cut metric to measure success in students' learning.  If we start talking about SLOs and the fact that teachers and administrators have to take the time to write those as well...

Lucia ScioreMorale seems good in the district right now.  What can you as a board member do to encourage and support a cooperative school environment?









Walker ReynoldsSo morale was a big deal for me last year.  In a lot of board meetings during public comment I spoke to morale in the district several times.  You're right.  Morale seems to be better.  Anecdotally when I talk to faculty and staff people seem lighter.  The board meetings are definitely much, much lighter.

I believe as a school board member the best way to foster high morale within the schools and within the district is to impress upon the administrators that they are leaders and not managers.  What we need in the district is leadership.  We don't need managers.  We have buildings full of college educated folks who have given their lives to educating our young people.  That's really what teachers are.  When I look in the eyes of my son's third grade teacher, or my son't Kindergarten teacher during parent teacher conferences, you can tell that they are the only two people in this town that care about my kids as much as I do.

So to foster high morale in the schools we need to impress upon our administrators that their job is to lead and not manage.  Set by example, be leaders.  Be Eisenhower.  Get people to do things that you want to do because they want to do them.

Christine IacobucciI think it was Bill Clinton at Cornell graduation who once talked about two kinds of leaders.  There are leaders who make unilateral decisions and collaborate only when they're forced to, and then there are leaders who make collaborative decisions and make unilateral decisions only when they're forced to.  I think we have a collaborative leader here.  For the kinds of people in Lansing that makes all the difference in the world.

As a school board member I will continue to listen and consider what people are saying and share that with a leader who seems to be genuinely collaborative, and who also seems to be fostering a culture of genuine care.  So I don't feel as if I really have to do very much right now.

Karen McGreeveyMike and I moved into Lansing four years ago.  We lived on South Hill.  So we were in Ithaca for about 14 years, and then in Aurora for a year, and then Lanisng.  We were drawn to Lansing, because we were making a decision about where to live, where to raise our kids.  We were drawn to Lansing because of the schools and the community.

When I arrived I didn't realize there was this sort of sense of competition.  Where was this competition coming from?  It was an underlying current.  But over the last four years of getting to know people -- people love this community and they love these schools.

When we find ourselves competing with one another we need to take a step back and say we're all in it for the kids.  So let's make sure that we're collaborating, working together, not competing for dollars between LTAPA, PTSO and the boosters.  Let's all work together.  let's come together whether it's volunteering your time to help kids out or you serve on an advisory council, or you ask to be on a shared decision making team or you come to board meetings or you talk to a board member.  The more that we can build relationships and trust with one another, the collaboration will happen.

Lucia ScioreAs a board member you will be in constant contact with administrators.  Do you think it's also important to stay in contact with teachers and staff and hear their concerns.  If so, how would you facilitate this communication?







Christine IacobucciThe shore answer is absolutely yes.  I think that's one of the things that I have always done.  One of the things that the school board used to do is have open forum nights.  People could just come in and talk about whatever happened to be on their mind.  i would really like to see that come back -- sort of a low stress 'let's have a chat.'  Talking to everyone.  And by the way on that list I think students should be part of that too, because a lot of times we think there is this generational barrier that we don't talk to kids.  I would really like to include our students in that process, too.



Walker ReynoldsAbsolutely.  I'm an organic, grass roots kind of guy.  Administrators are always going to paint a rosy picture when they're talking to boards.  You find out what's really happening when you talk to folks in the trenches.  That's not to disparage the administrators we have at present, but that's just the simple reality.

I'm trying to think of a situation where I've ever seen an administrator talking to the school board where they really laid down the down and dirty.  it's always a little rosier than reality.

I spend a lot of time talking to faculty and staff.  I stop students out in front of the schools and I ask them 'what do you think of so-and-so?  What do you think of this teacher?  What do you think of this principal?  Are they attentive to you?'  The staff-- have things improved over the last year?

The truth is I believe it's a school board's job to be antagonistic to the administration and supportive of faculty and staff.  You have to be collaborative to the administration.  You have to support them.  You have to give them the tools they need to succeed.  but it's the school board's job to challenge the administration.  To challenge them to exceed.  Then it's your job to support the front line folks who are really doing all the work, educating our kids.

Karen McGreeveyI think I'd like to talk more, instead of how I would do it I would like to explain how I have done it.  Over the last four years I've been a parent and a Mom, so I have facilitated conversations with staff and faculty and our administrators by getting to know them.  Spending time with them, serving on committees with them, asking to meet with them.

So Mike and I attend our parent teacher conferences in the fall and in the spring.  Even though it may not be requested, we still make a point of meeting with our teacher to have that relationship and that dialog.  I've built a relationship with our bus driver, Mike, one of the best bus drivers in this district.  He's one of our senior bus drivers.  When my little Katie was having some trouble I went to him and said, 'watch out for her.'  And he emailed me.  He told me she's doing really well.  So for me it's been a matter of getting to know the people who are serving our kids whether it's the nurses or the psychologist, or the cafeteria worker, or our superintendent or our teachers.  Get to know them, and we're working together to do what's best for our kids.

Lucia ScioreI have a couple more questions, however if I am going to keep to the hour limit I  need to close the question and answer period and go to closing statements.







Walker ReynoldsCould you read the questions at least?  That way if we want to address them in our closing statements we can.







Lucia ScioreCertainly.  One question we haven't asked is, do you have a sense of why so few candidates are running for school board this year?  Another question is do you have any ideas on alternative instructional methods, for example, distance learning for high school students?  And one that we actually did talk about, but it's a little bit different: morale is good on the Board Of Education.  How will you contribute to the cooperation and effectiveness of the board?  Those are the three.  You have two minutes for a closing statement.



Walker ReynoldsLet me close the way I began by saying thank you to the League of Women Voters and PTSO and the school board and our administrators and everyone who showed up to the meeting tonight.

I am actually going to use my two minutes to implore you to vote for Karen, even though there are three open spots.  Karen and I have spent the last four or five months talking in great depth about the school district, my passion for education and her passion for education, the challenges we face over the next year or two years, which are really watershed years in the history of Lansing schools.

We faced some tough times over the last couple of years and we're going to face even tougher times in the next two.

I implored Karen to run.  I think she's an exceptional candidate.  She and her husband Mike are unbelievable human beings, and I had the pleasure to coach her son Liam.  They're a great family and I really hope that Lansing voters turn out to support the budget and to support Karen for school board.

Chris is one of my favorite members of the sitting school board.  She, like myself, asks the tough questions and has faced a lot of heat for it.  Over the last year she hasn't faced so much heat.  I really hope you guys come out to vote for Karen and Chris.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you guys.  If it were my choice I'd stay behind the scenes.  If our sitting member of the library board had answered yes to my imploring her to run for school board I wouldn't be up here.  I would prefer to stay behind the scenes and work with Ms. Lifton's office, the Tompkins County IDA, the Cayuga Operating COmpany, and try to solve our funding crisis, which is what we really have here.  We don't have a spending problem.  We have a funding problem.

But if you do decide I'm the guy you want to sit on your board I'll appreciate your vote.  Thanks for having me here tonight.

Karen McGreeveyHow we fund education is at the heart of the matter.  Whatever we all can do with the current board and the leadership team and Chris to really understand the existing formula for funding education in New York State, and how might we as hopeful school board members work together with our leadership team and our teachers and our parents and our community to possibly see a change in the way we fund education in New York State.  I think that's going to be key.

We have learned tonight (at the preceding budget hearing) we can't really squeeze much more money out of this budget without fundamentally changing what we provide out children.  We have to focus on increasing revenue.

I think that to do that we have to be convicted as a community to advocate actively for education, to work very closely with the Town of Lansing to do well planned economic development to increase revenue so it doesn't fall on the homeowner, and that we look creatively at fundraising, whether that be from individuals, organizations, businesses, foundations... How can others help us pay for this education.

Just within our community we have Cornell University, Ithaca College and Wells College and TC3.  There is a significant amount of money coming there through grants and foundations.  Some of that is earmarked for education, for those universities to put that money into the school district.  Let's partner with them and leverage that money to support our kids and our teachers.

Christine IacobucciOne of the things I have heard Chris Pettograsso say is the importance of making connections.  I have a really good feeling about the people sitting with me at this table.  I have a good feeling about you.  I think that Karen, Walker and myself joining Glenn, Tom, Aziza and Julie at the board table would be a very positive thing and I look forward to the future.  Thank you.

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