Sep 20, 2007
Redding school board
D’Agostino runs for seat as write-in
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by MAGGIE CALDWELL
mcaldwell@thereddingpilot.com
A dark horse candidate has announced he’s seeking a seat on the Redding school board, a race that until now was uncontested.
Mike D’Agostino, a self-employed carpenter who has never held political office, is running as an unaffiliated, write-in candidate. This November he will throw his hat into the ring with David Lewson, a Republican and current chairman of the board, Lewis Brey, another Republican who was appointed to fill a vacancy earlier this year, Kathleen Joyce, a Democrat running for the first time, and Ed Miller, another Democrat who is filling a vacancy and running for his first term.
Mr. D’Agostino has attended every Redding school board meeting since September 2005 when he first came out to voice his disapproval about the district’s bus company, which faced a host of problems that continued well into the start of the 2006-07 school year. Since that initial meeting, Mr. D’Agostino said he continues to show up to “keep informed.”
“I think that sometimes motions and things are enacted without the board really considering the feelings and positions of everyone in town,” he said on Tuesday afternoon.
Running as a candidate without a political party, Mr. D’Agostino said unaffiliated voters — who make up 39% of Redding’s registered voters, a larger percentage than any political party in town — should have representation on the board.
“I just feel that the board is in such an important position and that we shouldn’t just let the political party choose people to represent us,” he said. “I think it should be a more inclusive process.”
Keeping with the idea of inclusion, Mr. D’Agostino envisions a board that is more “parent- and citizen-friendly.”
“If a citizen takes the time to come to a meeting and they have a concern or problem, I think that the board owes it to them to at least address their problem, even if it can’t be done right away,” he said. “I think a lot of parents are discouraged and that’s why you have such low attendance at the meetings. It seems as though the board is not interested in what the citizen has to say. They seem to only act when you have a group of citizens or a bunch of people, and it shouldn’t be that way. If someone takes the time to come to a meeting, we owe it to them to at least listen to them and try to give them answer.”
One of the issues Mr. D’Agostino would like to bring to the table is his concern about the maintenance of school buildings.
“I’m actually very concerned about the lack of funding that we give for building maintenance,” he said.
“The teachers’ lounges in both schools were in such disrepair, and it’s kind of embarrassing for us, as a school system, that we can’t provide funding to fix that,” he added.
Later in an e-mail Mr. D’Agostino clarified that stepping up school maintenance doesn’t require a larger budget.
“I feel we can find a way, when spending over $19 million, to allocate enough money to properly maintain the buildings to meet our expectations,” he wrote.
Mr. D’Agostino has lived in town for 19 years. He and his wife Toni, a Stamford public school teacher, have two children. Their daughter, Riley, is in first grade at Redding Elementary School, and their son, Cooper, in seventh grade at John Read Middle School.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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