Candidate Profile: Rich Maccarone

After a year away from the inner workings of the Glen Cove Board of Education, Richard Maccarone wants back in.

"It's troubling, what I'm seeing with our school district right now. It's embarrassing," said Maccarone. He sat near the front window of his store, Valley Sport & Trophy on Glen Street. His partner of 32 years retired last year, so he opted out of a bid for reelection to get his business in order, he said.

The store has supplied many a young Glen Cove athlete, making Maccarone familiar with countless local children and parents. It's where a lot of them still come to talk school board issues. 

The small business owner likened the district to a major company -- "a $75 million company that should be better run" -- and said the leadership at the top needs to improve. He criticized the Board's transparency, saying the public should be receiving more information than has been made available, though he noted his feeling that the system in Albany is a broken one that doesn't allow a school board to tell its taxpayers enough of what it's doing with their tax dollars.

Concerning some of the Board's recent decisions, like the move to convert the wood shop into an orchestra room, and its general discussions of curriculum, Maccarone said he doesn't feel like the public or students have been represented fairly.

"The average student doesn't have that much say. We should be spending 100 percent of the time on 100 percent of the kids, not 90 percent of our time on 10 percent of the kids," he said, referring to the district's highest achieving students.

He named a few other areas where he sees room for improvement: the district's website, which could look more like neighboring district's websites, with their proactive efforts to keep parents and residents informed. Per the ongoing testing investigations, the district's attorney could be present at Board meetings to give public updates, said Maccarone. He cited his past initiative as president to put all contracts on the district website, a move he said helped make him "the most transparent Board president in the last 20 years," he said.
 
While Maccarone said he feels some Board members are good people with the wider community's interests at heart, he thinks some are self-serving when it comes to considering what's important for the district versus what's important to them.

"They only see one thing," he said.

He included himself in the fold of Board members who have made mistakes, and said he learned from his. One of his first votes as a trustee was for a past superintendent's recommendation for a math coordinator. Despite concerns from some that the chosen person didn't know math, Maccarone was one of the "yes" votes that brought them to the high school. Six months in, students petitioned the Board and superintendent to remove the coordinator because he didn't know math.

"It cost us $50,000 to buy him out," said Maccarone, who voted against the buyout. "I said, 'I will never rubber stamp something again. I will always do my homework.'"

At the PTA Council's Meet the Candidates forum Monday, Maccarone told the audience he had seen the inside of the Board and it "wasn't always pretty." He joined prior to Joseph Laria's appointment as interim superintendent and spent two years working with Laria in executive and public sessions. Looking back, he questioned Laria's competency as a superintendent, and said a blue collar community like Glen Cove doesn't long tolerate someone who doesn't produce the results they promise. He expressed his own read of Laria's leadership style.

"Huge ego. When Dr. Laria didn't get his way, Dr. Laria held a grudge," Maccarone said. "He was more concerned with promoting himself than promoting the district."

Maccarone has stated he supports an investigation into Laria's decisions over the past year or more.

As a fixture in the community with his store, Maccarone said he would make for an accessible Board member who is ready to stick up for all segments of the community and its children.

"Nobody works harder for all the kids than I do," he said.

The school board election and budget vote is Tuesday. Maccarone is vying for two open seats along with candidates Eric Bailey and Grady Farnan, the current Board vice-president.