Meeting the candidates

The East Meadow PTA Council invited the community to meet the candidates running for three seats on the Board of Education at a forum on Monday.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday at every local elementary school. Three incumbents — Joseph Parisi, Marcee Rubinstein and Jeffrey Rosenking — are seeking re-election. Matthew Melnick, a parent of a Barnum Woods Elementary School kindergarten student, is challenging Rosenking, while Parisi and Rubinstein are running unopposed.

In the early moments of the program, held at the Leon J. Campo Salisbury Center, several audience members questioned the forum procedures because moderators from the Nassau Region PTA announced that Parisi and Rubinstein would not participate in the question-and-answer session.

Donna LaScala, East Meadow’s PTA Council president, explained that the group decided that the unopposed candidates would only make opening and closing statements in order to give more time to the pair running in the contested race. The moderators noted that Rubinstein also sits on the Nassau PTA’s board, and therefore it would be a conflict of interest for them to ask her questions.

Alicia Piazza-Coffey, a McVey Elementary and Woodland Middle School parent and founder of the East Meadow Opt Out page on Facebook, called the forum a farce, and said that its structure benefited the incumbents. She questioned why there was a one-hour time limit, how the moderator selected questions and why Parisi and Rubinstein didn’t have to answer questions when she said she had seen unopposed trustees do so in the past.

“The community has the right to hear their opinions on certain issues that were addressed,” Piazza-Coffey said. “This particular meeting showed that things are not as transparent as they’ve been made to seem. There is a lack of disclosure.”