MNEWS: Dunne, a teacher at Manhattan College
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=2007705090360
Bernadette Dunne re-elected as Yonkers school board president
By HANNAN ADELY
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: May 9, 2007)
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YONKERS – Educator Bernadette Dunne will continue to serve as the city’s school board president, after having been re-elected to the position last night for a third term.
Dunne, a former parochial school principal and a teacher at Manhattan College in the Bronx, was first appointed to the board in 1995.
The school board also re-elected Debra Martinez, director of Family Health Programs for the New York state Children’s Health Insurance Program, as vice president.
Dunne and Martinez took oaths of office at the Yonkers Board of Education’s annual meeting yesterday.
The school board held both its annual meeting and its monthly stated meeting at its central offices last night. Public comment is usually heard at the start of the stated meeting, but the board did not allow public comment at the meeting last night.
School officials said there was no public comment because the two meetings were held back to back.
Pat Puleo, president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers, said she was disappointed because the union planned to send people to talk about the need for a new contract. The teachers’ contract expires in eight weeks.
“I am concerned that there continues to be a lack of communication,” Puleo said.
The board is not required by law to allow the public to speak, said Yonkers public schools spokeswoman Jerilynne Fierstein.
In other school board news, Mayor Phil Amicone is interviewing candidates to fill a vacant position on the nine-member school board.
John Pagliaroli reached the end of his term and was unable to stay on the board due to changes in the city’s ethics law, passed in 2005, barring city officials and city employees from serving on the board.
Pagliaroli works for the city as a special assistant to the mayor.
Trustees are appointed by the mayor and serve without pay. Yonkers is the state’s only school district that empowers the city’s mayor to appoint school board members.
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