Jeanne D’Esposito fighting for Malverne on state level

Jeanne D’Esposito will continue to serve on the Malverne Board of Education after being reelected on May 21. Her seat ran unopposed. But she’s not just serving another 4 years on the Malverne school board — her reelection extends her position as secretary and treasurer of the Nassau Suffolk School Board Association.

The Nassau Suffolk School Board Association, or NSSBA, an organization of school board electees that want to take their service one step further. They connect schools across Long Island to exchange methods of success and try to improve education for every student on Long Island.

“What I particularly love doing is getting involved in the advocacy aspect of it,” D’Esposito said. “There there's so many issues facing public schools on Long Island right now, and it just gets harder and harder and harder and harder every year — especially with Covid and our schools are being challenged on many, many fronts.”

D’Esposito has been on the Malverne school board for 8 years. Before that, she was president of the Parent Teacher Associations for the elementary school, then middle school, then high school. One of her proudest accomplishments over the course of her time on the school board is her role in keeping Boces’ Long Island High School for the Arts open. The school recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

However, they weren’t able to save the Boces’ Doshi school, which was a specialized STEM school. D’Esposito’s son was in that program. That experience got her passionate about solving problems — she was involved in hiring one of the Doshi teachers to teach in the district to bring that STEM education to Malverne kids.

That ability to make a difference made her want to ramp up her school board involvement. In 2020, the NSSBA approached her to join the executive committee. She became chair of the nominating committee in 2022, and was recently voted into the role of secretary and treasurer, a role formerly held by Charmise Desiré, from Uniondale.

In her new role, D’Esposito is able to not only represent Malverne, but also fight for her community on a larger scale than before, and advocate for “what our public schools need throughout Long Island and throughout the state,” she said.

“It's important for people in the thick of things, the trustees who run these boards and have to deal with these issues,” she said, “To be able to have a voice with our state representatives or local representatives, our federal representatives in the House and the Senate. It's important for us to be able to bring information on these issues so that they can better help us solve these problems.”

And the flow of information goes the other way, too — the NSSBA makes resources more accessible to districts throughout Long Island. One of D’Esposito’s favorite parts of her position on the NSSBA is lending a helping hand to members of other school boards, and watching them succeed.

But perhaps her foremost priority is listening to her neighbors in Malverne, and advocating for their needs.

“The more I know, the more I can share,” D’Esposito said. “That’s what I’m most proud of — that I can be that resource for my community and also that voice for my community.”