Three Board of Education incumbents retained their respective seats for three-year terms Tuesday in the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Union Free School District.
Incumbent Jennifer Kerrane defeated challenger Katherine Bannon with 465 votes to 180, giving Kerrane 72% of the vote.
Incumbent Patricia rudd defeated challenger Gjergji Shuku with 566 votes to 116, giving her 72% of 682 total votes.
Vice President Kathryn Canese ran unopposed and received 602 votes.
The district’s $44,593,905 budget was also passed with 61% of the vote on 769 total votes. The new budget is a 5.37% increase in spending from the current fiscal year and the tax levy increase of 1.54% falls below the allowable tax cap of 2.18 percent.
Homeowners can expect a $59.46 average increase for the year, which amounts to $0.16 daily, officials said in a community newsletter.
The Hillside Public Library’s $3.6 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year was also on the ballot approved, a $505,525 spending increase that amounts to no increase in library taxes. Peter Pinto was also re-elected to another five-year term on the library’s board of trustees. At this time, it is unclear how many votes were for each proposition.
Also approved Tuesday night was the $227 million Sewanhaka Central High School District budget and two propositions to use capital reserve funds for both districts. The budget passed with 66% of the district’s vote which had 3,839 total votes.
In Sewanhaka, almost $6 million will be used to upgrade the kitchens and cafeteria at Elmont, Carey, Floral Park and New Hyde Park High Schools, which passed with 71% of the 4,015 total votes.
Because Sewanhaka’s budget is made for five high schools in the district, its budgets have consistently been larger because of this.
For the Board of Education, Vice President Kathryn Canese was re-elected to a second term after running unopposed. Canese is a past president of the Hillside Grade School PTA.
A district resident since 2004, Kerrane currently works as a nursery school teacher in Manhasset and has been part of the process for recent administration hires in the district, including a new superintendent, among other things.
With her re-election, Rudd will begin a third three-year term. Rudd was on the board for 15 years before taking a two-year hiatus in 2014 to move to Michigan for work. She also served as vice president of the board for one year during her first stint. Rudd moved back and returned to the board in 2016 after defeating Shamini Sivalingam for an open seat.
Rudd has spent years lobbying for education in both seats of power and is a member of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association. She previously said her passion is legislation and she believes that the federal government should give more control over education to the states.