School Board

An afternoon in 1956 two Mother's from up the street came down to talk with me. They asked if I would consider running for the local school board. I thought it over & talked it over for a few days & decided to go for it.
I ran for a three year term & won by several votes. I served on that board for a total of 9 years.
The last ofthose years I was elected President of the Board.
At that time the State Education Dept. contacted us and wanted to know if we would consider merging into one district with Ovid & Romulus. I set up a meeting, which I chaired between the three School Boards to discuss that. After a couple hours of pros & cons the Romulus board walked out. At that point I thought this might not be a good idea, as it wouldn't be big enough to be of much benefit to the children. Also afraid of what it might do to the Villages.
We were then pressured by the State to set up a public vote & did so. The issue passed by 4 votes. A few of us who had second thoughts found that 12 people voted that were not eligible. We took this, with a lawyer we had hired to the State Supreme court & also to a hearing before the Commisioner of Education in Albany. In both cases we lost our appeal & we were ticked as only our lawyer could speak at the hearings.
In 1968 the Merger became a fact & I ran for that Board & won a three year term. The two schools were allowed to hold seperate graduations that year & I had the privledge of presenting my daughter Jan her diploma. She was also Valedictorian of her class & gave a very nice speech to her class.
The first order of business was to pick a name and after much discussion we picked South Seneca, which it is today. All of this was quite an experience & I learned a lot from it. I still feel Interlaken was hurt bad by the Merger & went down hill after losing the High School to Ovid.
One memory of the old Interlaken School Board was a year I was appointed to negotiate with the teachers a contract. The negotiater for the teachers was the teacher who had kick me off the basketball team in High school when he caught me smoking. All in all it came out good and they said one of the best contracts ever for both sides.
Guess thats enough for now on this subject-