Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Six candidates for the Hempstead Board of Education faced an audience of village residents during a sometimes-contentious question-and-answer forum in the Kennedy Memorial Park auditorium.
The Hempstead NAACP, whose president is Barbara Powell, hosted the May 6 forum.
Kevin Boone and Nicholas Perdomo are first-time candidates.
Perdomo is a real estate agent with Español Realty, and CEO of Perdomo Development Group, LLC.
Boone, who just completed a four-year term as a Hempstead village trustee, is also a real estate agent, but with KW Greater Nassau in Garden City; He has been a volunteer member of the Hempstead Fire Department for 20 years.
The other four candidates all have previous school board experience.
Lamont Johnson, a retired Hempstead police officer and village trustee 2017-2021, has held a seat on the school board since 2013.
Joylette Williams, a longtime Nassau Community College professor with a doctorate in English, is completing a three-year term on the school board, after serving for a year as a Hempstead village trustee.
BOCES teacher Gwendolyn Jackson holds a master’s degree in deaf education, and served on the Hempstead school board 2015-2018.
Randy Stith was elected to the board in 2017, but was removed from his seat by board action in November 2023 for accidentally revealing confidential student information on his unofficial Hempstead UFSD Facebook page.
Among the many issues raised were charter schools, control of funding, transparency in school board operations with fewer departures into executive session during regular meetings, handling special education and English Language Learner needs, assessment of curriculum and programs, excessive administrative pay, and whether the school district has progressed beyond its decades of struggle with low test scores and graduation rates.
Jackson denied district improvement.
“In 2015,” she said, “We were in the same position as we are now. We had teachers being laid off, we had programs being cut, we had a fund deficit. When I left the board, we did have a $13 million fund balance. We were able to bring back our reading programs.”
Johnson refuted Jackson’s position. “Each year that I have been on the school board, we have done better,” he said. “We started out with a 37 percent graduation rate, but now it’s at 87 percent. All our elementary schools are in good standing. Hempstead High School is off receivership. A.B.G.S. Middle School is off receivership. Our students are going to the most prestigious universities that this country has.”
Johnson also stated that recent news of a $30 million deficit was incorrect.
“The district has reserves,” Johnson said. “We have been able to hold the line on state taxes the past six years.”
Challenged to address chronic absenteeism, Williams pointed out, “Part of absenteeism relates to challenging weather conditions,” because students who live far from the high school or middle school may have to walk 40 minutes each way from their homes. “We do have equipment for busing but must work out the logistics.”
All the candidates agreed on the benefits of dedicated tactics for community engagement, continued efforts to boost reading scores, and high school programs that would confer either college credit or certifications for skilled work such as Certified Nurse Assistant or Emergency Medical Technician.
Also important to all the candidates was stronger control of student registration.
“The state attorney general put burdensome stipulations in place,” Johnson said. “Our district has to register students and only then find out if they are residents. Places like Levittown send students to us that we must spend to educate.”
The controversial presence of charter schools was addressed by Jackson, who said, “They are here to stay. We need to build a partnership with them. They are all our students.”
