VOORHEESVILLE — Two candidates are seeking two seats on the school board on Election Day May 19, but, because a third candidate withdrew from the race, the district has reopened petitions for 15 days, as required by law.

Incumbent Doreen Saia and newcomer Adam Shelmerdine turned in petitions and plan to seek office. Local parent Christina Suits also turned in a petition, but withdrew from the race on Wednesday, April 29.

The Voorheesville Central School District re-opened petitions for the school board election. Petitions are now due to the district office on Tuesday, May 12, at 4 p.m.

Candidates

Saia, 48, is an attorney with Greenberg Traurig LLP. She and her husband, John Saia, have two sons in the district, in fifth grade and eighth grade. She joined the board six months ago when the school board appointed her to former board member Kristine Gravino’s position. Her seat is open for a three-year term, to fill the remainder of Gravino’s four-year term.

“I have extensive experience in my professional career working with boards, which has helped as I moved into the board work here,” Saia said.

Board member Gary Hubert’s four-year term expires in June; Hubert is not seeking re-election.

Shelmerdine, 29, is a local beekeeper who runs a small chicken farm. Shelmerdine and his wife, Stephanie, have two young children; the elder is in the second grade in Voorheesville.

“My wife and I own a small business, Stephanie Beads, where we do woodworking and jewelry. I’m a journalist and also a photographer, by trade, for the Legislative Gazette,” Shelmerdine said.

He serves on an advisory board for the Albany Museum of Political Corruption, an organization that is seeking funding for its museum to be built. According to the museum website, it “will offer tourists a fascinating, informative, and irreverent journey through New York State's ‘rich’ history of political corruption.”

“I’m a concerned parent willing to fight for principles and our children,” Shelmerdine said. He wants to see that “integrity and a common-sense approach remain present and foremost in the Voorheesville school district,” he said.

Suits, 44, is an Albany attorney and an Army National Guard veteran who has been active in Voorheesville’s Parent Teacher Association, and was involved with the Voorheesville Community Alliance for Healthy Choices. She and her husband, John, have a son in kindergarten and another in second grade. She declined to give a reason on the record for her decision to withdraw from the race.

Budget

“We need to be careful as we proceed with the budget,” Saia said. “There’s a lot that has to be done. We’re a small school district. We have to be diligent about staying in budget.”

Saia said that the proposed $23 million budget voters will decide on in May includes the addition of an elementary school teacher, and that the board must make “purposeful” decisions.

“We don’t want to be in a situation of cutting what we’ve just added,” she said.

Shelmerdine said that he wants to protect taxpayers from both “unfunded mandates with little or no opposition,” and from “unneeded construction projects” — a topic he said he would “rather not get into” outside of a formal debate.

“I’ll have a hard-line, conservative approach to school spending,” he said.

Common Core

The state currently requires teachers to be evaluated, in part, by their students’ standardized test results on exams for Common Core Learning Standards. The scores are counted despite objections from New York state United Teachers, which originally agreed to testing for teacher evaluation in order for the state to receive federal Race to the Top funds.

About 75 parents attended a board presentation the night before this spring’s testing began that offered details on how the schools would give the tests. Eighteen percent of students in Voorheesville opted out of taking the exams.

Saia’s children did not opt out of the English language arts and math state tests administered to students in third through eighth grades this month.

“They both took the test. I felt very strongly that was a parental decision,” Saia said.

Saia told The Enterprise that several parents asked her why the school board did not take a stand and refuse to have students district-wide examined.

“I’m a lawyer, and I have to uphold laws,” she said. She took an oath when she joined the school board, she said, stating that she would follow state laws, which include administering standardized tests.

Saia said she was vocal as a board member, insisting that the board provide information about the testing.

“I was concerned that parents said students were stressed out,” Saia said. “I don’t want kids hating coming to school. You can do test prep in all sorts of ways. It can be fun, or not fun.”

The school board “can look at seeing that kids aren’t stressed out in the classrooms,” she said.

Shelmerdine said that he wants the district to have an open conversation about education.

“I am in stark opposition to the Common Core standards,” he said. The state treats teachers as “second-class citizens,” he said.

“I’m absolutely tired of it. Children do not need to be put into a category where they’re considered ‘common,’ ” Shelmerdine said. A “ ‘test-athon’ separates students from teachers,” he said.

“I’m not opposed to standardized testing in different forms, just the Common Core standards,” Shelmerdine told The Enterprise. “There are some folks calling for the end of it. Parents should be made aware of their inherent right to have full say over their children and what they’re learning,” according to the cases of Meyer and Pierce, he said. In Meyer v. Nebraska, in 1923, the United States Supreme Court held that a 1919 Nebraska law, passed when there was a strong anti-German movement because of World War I, forbidding teachers to use any language but English, violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Similarly, in 1925, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court expanded coverage of the due process clause after Oregon passed a law to eliminate parochial schools, challenged by the governor.

“I am a courageous voice for hundreds of teachers, parents, and students. I am far from afraid to speak up on behalf of them,” Shelmerdine said, in an emailed statement to The Enterprise. “I am a voice for the teachers, who are afraid to speak out against a ‘one-size-fits-all’ curricula, for fear of punishment. I will bring to the forefront their First Amendment rights, a protection for every citizen of this great nation.

“I am a voice for parents of crying children during homework time,” his statement continued. “A curriculum that labels you ‘incorrect’ when you have the correct answer, I say, is, laughably, a major failure. Our great nation got to the moon and back on good old classic learning. With my vast knowledge of Supreme Court cases and federal law pertaining to parents and education, we will soon stop this madness, and be able to help our children with their work once again. 

“I am a voice for students,” Shelmerdine continued, “who have no idea the amount of personal data that is being collected from them. This not only puts their identity at risk, but [the collected data] also, unbeknownst to them and their parents, is being used for purposes beyond the scope of its promised intention. ‘Cradle-to-college’ has a much darker purpose when our children are looked at as subjects entered into computer algorithms, rather than the wonderful individuals they are. Currently, legal cases are brewing quietly in regards to this feature of Common Core.”

Final thoughts

“Having worked on the board for the past few months, I am impressed by the commitment and strengths of my fellow board members,” Saia said in an email to The Enterprise, “and [I] now realize first hand that, while we are a very strong school district about which there is much to be proud, there remain many challenges in our future.  My sons are in fifth and eighth grades so I have a very strong personal interest in the school.

“Because of them, specifically,” Saia continued, “but, also, because of all of the other families I have gotten to know over the past 10 years through school and athletic events… I… have a very strong interest in our community more generally.  As I listened to the positions taken most recently on the issue of opting out and on the school budget, I was quite honestly humbled by the degree to which people really care in our community….I believe that is very hard to find and [I] feel blessed to have built our home and to be raising our children here.” 

“It is the oath of office for every school board member to uphold a sound education for each student,” Shelmerdine said. “This promise has been broken. As a duty to my community, and most importantly, my very own children, I will fight to prove our precious gifts are beyond ‘common.’ I will work side by side, with the existing board to find ways to move beyond Common Core, before too many children are adversely affected.”

“The board really cares, and we’re listening,” Saia, as the incumbent, concluded. “We seriously think and talk about what the pros and cons are. I see a lot that needs to get done.”

Updated on May 1, 2015: A story profiling three Voorheesville School board candidates — Doreen Saia, Adam Shelmerdine, and Christina Suits — was published online on April 28, 2015, but never printed. It was replaced with a second version on April 29, which was printed on April 30, after Suits withdrew from the race.

Additionally, the story was updated on May 1 to report that the school district had reopened the window for petitions for 15 days.