District 15 candidate profiles

Posted

Abel Feldhamer and write-in candidate John Kinder

By Michael Orbach

Issue of May 15, 2009 / 21 Iyar 5769

Driving home from his son's victorious little league game, Abel Feldhamer was candid about his goals for the Lawrence School board.

“I would like to see communication improved,” Feldhamer explained. “I don't mean communication [limited] to segments of the community.”

Feldhamer is a father of three from Cedarhurst and practices law on Long Island. He is running for the seat being vacated by Michael Hatten. John Kinder of Inwood is mounting a challenge as a write-in candidate.

Feldhamer has been a resident of the district for the last six years and, as a young parent, he says he is keenly aware of the disconnect many feel towards the school district. He hopes to change that through improved dialogue between members of the community; bringing back community-wide programs like the Super Sunday Program; and keeping senior citizens notified about programs available to them.

Feldhamer cites the example of East Ramapo, New York, which has a similar demographic makeup to the Lawrence school district.

“We can follow their example with better ommunication, improved services and making all members of the community feel like stakeholders [in the district]. By doing that, they’ve also improved community relations,” Feldhamer explained.

Another idea he would like to directly adapt to the Lawrence school district is teacher training for public and private school teachers.

Feldhamer praised the current school board but added that if he wins, he’ll make communication a priority. “Everyone can a little bit better. There have been great strides made but obviously there is room for improvement.”

He acknowledged the current sentiment against the board members not having children in the school system, but said he hopes to work around that.

“I hope to focus on overcoming that distrust as much as I can over time... The key is to help people appreciate that the school district is not just a place you pay money towards, it’s something you're a part of,” Feldhamer elaborated. “[It’s] something that you take pride in and something that you should benefit from. It’s something that everyone should feel a connection to, whether their children are in public or private schools, or if they have no children at all.”

John Kinder, a longtime Inwood resident, recalled a different time in the history of the Five Towns.

“Everyone respected one another. This was a tight, tight community. When we went to the other schools and they heard you went to a Lawrence school, this community was number one,” Kinder told The Jewish Star. “And there’s no way this community should be divided by anything.”

It is the current disharmony that is pushing him to run a write-in campaign for the seat on the Lawrence school board being vacated by the Michael Hatten. Kinder’s incorrect filing of paperwork prevented him from having a formal spot on the ballot.

“There’s too much animosity among the Orthodox community and the public school community. A lot of parents in this community feel that they’re taking away from our community to give to their community,” he said, adding that if he wins the seat he aims to open up a dialogue between the board and the community.

“Nobody is perfect, the board has made some mistakes and perhaps the parents have made some mistakes. We should focus on bringing some transparency back to the issues at hand,” Kinder explained.

He said that the anger at the board stems from a lack of communication between the board and the parents, as well as the board being mainly composed of private school parents that may not have the best interests of the public school children in mind.

Kinder himself is a graduate of Lawrence and his three children have attended the Lawrence school system, with his youngest daughter still enrolled in the Middle School. He said the education he and his children received was “dynamite.” His daughter is graduating from St. John's University and his son was ranked the number one quarterback on Long Island and received a scholarship to Syracuse University. Kinder has always prided himself on being involved in the community whether as a coach on the Inwood Buccaneers or as a volunteer firefighter.

He believes that any trust between the school board and the parents has been eroded since the shift of the fourth graders to the middle school and the announced closing of the number six school. “It overshadows the good they’ve done,” he said.

He hopes that the community will come together again. “I’m sure there are [Orthodox] kids that would love to come to public school,” Kinder said. “I’m sure the Orthodox community has some athletes that the Lawrence school would love to have. I’m sure if all the kids got together and played, we’d be a heckuva team.”

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