Running for school board

Residents in the Lawrence and Hewlett-Woodmere school districts will go to the polls and vote for Board of Education trustees and their respective budgets on May 17.

In Lawrence, that has challenged elections — when a candidate runs against a specific nominee — longtime Trustee Dr. David Sussman is being opposed by Asher Matathias. Sitting trustees, Michael Hatten and Tova Plaut are running unopposed.

Hewlett-Woodmere Trustee Harold Kislik is stepping down. The two candidates are incumbent Mitchell A. Greebel and Daniella Simon. Both are running unchallenged in the district’s at-large election, where the top vote-getters win the seats. All terms are three years.

Sussman vs. Matathias
For the third consecutive year, Asher Matathias, a Woodmere resident, is challenging an incumbent. Matathias, 72, is a constant presence at school board meetings, where he voices his opinion on what he sees as Lawrence’s academic and administrative shortfalls.

“The incumbents and administration, not given to verbalizing our expectations and aspirations, shall have me on the board, who is neither shy nor a man of few words in the effort to inform and educate,” said the St. John’s University adjunct instructor in political science.

Matathias said he wants to address the issues related to an immigrant population: “By someone sensitive, empathetic and energetic, who was a new comer to America sixty years ago,” he said.

He wants to see the “end of the ongoing bullying of critics” of the school district as he views it and wants to “arrest declining student performance.” Matathias did not offer any methods of achieving his goals, except to say he wants to “return the excellence in appointments for superintendent and high school principal.”

After 21 years on the board, Dr. David Sussman, 66, a urologist, was thinking of not running again. “I was actually considering stepping down, as I was thinking it’s good for the board to turn over, but there is nothing positive in the one gentleman who is running, and there is still work to be done,” the Lawrence resident said.