Mensch and Smith assume leadership of Blind Brook Board of Education

July 14, 2023 at 12:31 p.m.

Jeffrey Mensch is unanimously elected as the Blind Brook Board of Education’s president at its July 10 meeting, after testing the waters of leadership as the entity’s vice president during the 2022-23 school year. His term will run through June 30, 2024. This is his third year on the board. (Jeffrey Cullen Dean/Westmore News)

Jeffrey Mensch and Samantha Smith were unanimously elected as president and vice president, respectively, of the Blind Brook Board of Education at its July 10 meeting.

Both board members ran unopposed for their leadership positions, which will be effective through June 30, 2024.

Danny Fung and Katherine Hallissy Ayala were also sworn -in as the board’s newest members, filling the seats previously held by Jennifer Schlactus and Rick Buzin, who chose not to seek reelection in May’s school board race. They will each serve a three-year term until June 30, 2026.

  

 Katherine Hallissy Ayala reads the oath of office swearing her in as a member of the Blind Brook Board of Education.
 By Jeffrey Cullen Dean   

“It will be an honor and a privilege to support this community,” Mensch said after his election. “The first two years of my board term have not been the easiest, but I’m hoping for better times ahead. With that in mind, I look forward to continuing our district’s success from the past year under our strong administrative team, led by (Superintendent) Dr. (Colin) Byrne, and great faculty and staff. Lastly, I want to thank and apologize to my wife. When I started on this board, I told her I would never be president or maybe she told me I could never be president—sorry, honey.”

Mensch is kicking off the third year of his first term on the board.

“I’m excited to take on the role of vice president on the board of Blind Brook,” Smith said after her own election. “I look forward to working with board members and I think it’s always a positive thing to have new perspectives and ideas. I hope to continue to involve the community by having increased participation at meetings and through district-wide events.”

In an interview after the meeting, Mensch, who served as vice president during the 2022-23 school year, said he hopes the board will come up with ways to further open communication between the board and community members over the course of the next academic year.

    Danny Fung swears himself in as a new member of the Blind Brook Board of Education.
 By Jeffrey Cullen Dean   

Following this year’s contentious budget vote, which historically failed in its initial referendum, Mensch said Blind Brook community members who normally didn’t make political statements or weren’t public voices came out of the woodwork to share their thoughts. The new board president said he wants to keep these people engaged.

“We should be talking to community members more and we need to figure out ways to reach out to the community. That’s one of our goals,” he said. “We had a lot of input around the budget frustration from people. There were some new voices we hadn’t heard before and they didn’t feel like we heard them and now we need to engage them. They’ve come forward as community members and we need to figure out better ways to get in touch.”

The potential new communication initiatives, he added, will hopefully help the board avoid a situation like the unsuccessful budget vote.

“We take responsibility for not being as communicative as we should have been and we won’t let that happen again,” he said. “We won’t let budget votes go by without screaming from the hilltops that there’s a vote and I think we sort of took for granted that people would turn up and vote and we had a low turnout.”

Smith echoed Mensch’s statements on communication in an interview after the meeting. Though she’s only been on the board for one year, the new vice president said she feels she and Mensch have enough experience to lead it. The new Board of Education is young, said Smith, as it has two new members and Scott Jaffee, its most senior member, is in his sixth year of service.

“Community involvement is something I ran on last year—coming to meetings and joining committees,” she said. “I think the more involved the community is, the better it is for our district.”

A community involved in the school district is important, said Smith. She herself attended Blind Brook High School and moved her family to the district so her kids could have the same experience she did.

    Kicking off the second year of her first term, Samantha Smith becomes vice president of the Blind Brook Board of Education at its July 10 meeting.
 By Jeffrey Cullen Dean 

During the meeting, she said there were several openings on the Board of Education’s committees and suggested that community members get involved and join them.

Looking toward the future, Mensch said he hopes this new configuration of the board can focus on improving the schools, which is what the trustees were elected to do in the first place.

“I think between Jen Schlactus and Scott Jaffee, we’ve settled a lot of the turmoil,” he said. “We have a teacher contract that is now settled, we now have other contracts that are settled, our litigation is with the lawyers—now it’s tackling being a school board. That is manageable and something we can all do. I’m hopeful that we can focus on doing what we all came here to do instead of worrying about construction.”

For more information on joining the board of education’s committees, contact [email protected].