GUILDERLAND — Five candidates are running for three seats on the Guilderland School Board.

John Fraher, Carolyn Kelly, and Gloria Towle-Hilton are each running for the first time. Barbara Fraterrigo has served on the board for a decade and Colleen O’Connell has served for three years.

The third incumbent, Thomas Nachod, the board’s longest-serving member at 12 years, is not seeking re-election. A banker, he is leaving Guilderland to be president of a new bank on Long Island.

The three-year posts are unpaid and the three highest vote-getters will serve on the nine-member board, taking office in July.

Candidates had to file their petitions by Monday. The election is May 15; at the same time, voters will be deciding on an $82 million budget for next year.

John Fraher

John Fraher, of Witte Road, became interested in running for the school board, he said, after talking to his Westmere neighbors.
"There’s a lot of talk in our neighborhood this year. There are concerns about the rising cost of the budget and if we are spending money prudently," said Fraher.
Fraher, a certified public accountant with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Wayne State University in Detroit, said, "I thought I could be of assistance."

Fraher grew up in town, attending Christ the King School in Guilderland and then graduating from Bishop Gibbons High School, where he played a variety of sports. He now has three children in the Guilderland schools — two at Farnsworth Middle School and one at Guilderland Elementary School. He has recently coached in the local youth soccer league.
Asked about his goals if he is elected to the school board, Fraher said, "I would like to make sure we’re spending dollars where they should be spend, with the children in mind first."
He called the district’s annual budget "a large animal with many complexities" and he complimented the "positive things" the school board has done in the last year or two to control costs, such as bidding services to lower costs.
"We spend a lot of money on programs," said Fraher. "Some are great. Others I question. I’m all for sports, but are we putting some of those items ahead of scholastic needs"" he asked.

Carolyn Kelly

Carolyn Kelly, of Stonefield Way, has done a wide range of volunteer work on behalf of her children. An auditor with a degree in accounting, she has 17 years of experience in financial forensics and internal auditing.
She’d like to put that expertise to work as a school board member. "I really, truly love children," she said, "and really want to ensure children receive the...education they need at a reasonable cost to taxpayers. I also believe parents should be embraced and their concerns should be respectfully considered."
Kelly, who has lived in the school district for 21 years, sees the upcoming year as "critical" for the district as it searches for a new superintendent and as it faces declines in enrollment and state aid; Kelly said "thoughtful discussion" is needed.

Kelly’s varied volunteer experience has centered around her three children — her daughters are in eighth and ninth grades at Guilderland and she has a 5-year-old son. She has been active in many different roles in the PTA at the elementary-, middle-, and high-school level; has taught youth in her church, Saint Madeleine Sophie; is a Girl Scout leader; has been a parent advocate for the Committee on Preschool Education; and was a past co-chair of a Capital District group of parents of children with special needs.

Kelly has also been an outspoken advocate for increased school security. She had served on a district subcommittee that studied school security and recommended monitors be posted at elementary schools to buzz in visitors through locked doors. School board members compromised by hiring just the monitors, after some expressed concern it would change the culture of the Guilderland schools to lock the front doors.
Asked this week what she thought about the current system, Kelly said, "I think there are some more concerns that could be addressed. It’s wonderful to have monitors for a portion of the day. We certainly raised awareness."
Kelly has served on the Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee since 1999. This year, she voiced support for the $82 million proposal and said she was "absolutely thrilled to see FLES finally in the budget," a reference to the Foreign Language Early Start program that will introduce kindergartners, and first- and second-graders to Spanish.
Kelly also said she couldn’t support the added enrichment teacher at the middle school since the school will have 200 fewer students and she said, "I don’t think we’re funding technology properly."

She also opposed combining the supervisors’ posts for English and social students at the high school, to save $65,000; Kelly said both were needed and said the board should look at supervisors for kindergarten through 12th grade.

She supported the summer reading program for struggling elementary-school students.

Ultimately, the school board included FLES, the middle-school enrichment teacher, and the summer reading program in the budget proposal and combined the supervisors’ posts for English and social studies at the high school.
Kelly said this week of serving on the school board, "It’s important to have a board that’s open to new ideas and it’s important to have a parents’ perspective on the board."

Gloria Towle-Hilt
Gloria Towle-Hilt, a long-time social-studies teacher at Farnsworth Middle School, is retiring in June but says she wants to "give back" to a school district that has been supportive of her and helped her grow, so is running for the school board.

She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University at Albany and, in addition to being a social studies teacher, she started the program for gifted students at the middle school and later started the program for at-risk students, she said.

Towle-Hilt, of Stanford Drive, married a fellow Farnsworth teacher and both of their children are Guilderland graduates; their daughter is an elementary-school music teacher and their son works in technology.

One of the ways the school district was supportive, said Towle-Hilt, was in allowing her husband and herself first a one-year and then a two-year leave of absence to teach in Africa. Towle-Hilt developed an interest in Africa because of a pen pal she had there; she became passionate about teaching there. The experience later enriched her teaching back in Guilderland, she said.

Towle-Hilt has no particular agenda in running for the board, she said, but is interested in improving communication and relationships among different parts of the district.

She gave an example from her teaching experience. She began taking her at-risk students to help in a city soup kitchen and found the volunteer work brought out their empathy and increased both their awareness of others and their own sense of worth in contributing.

Now she takes her regular classroom students to help at the soup kitchen as well; many have gone on to volunteer on their own time, she said.

Towle-Hilt described a group of elderly volunteers who were at first wary of working with 12-year-olds but, once Towle-Hilt paired them up, they became pals, she said, and now look forward to working with her students.
She also described her work spearheading a Habitat for Humanity project in Guilderland, an idea that germinated in a social-studies cabinet meeting, she said, and spread to include all different parts of the Guilderland community. "It was inspirational," she said of completing the first suburban Habitat home in the area.

Towle-Hilt said she is pleased with the growing diversity in Guilderland and would like to emphasize the positive aspects of a diverse community.

Colleen O’Connell
Incumbent Colleen O’Connell, of Salvia Lane, said this week that she shares "a common philosophy" with Towle-Hilt and the two are coordinating their campaigns. The pair know each other from their church, Saint Madeleine Sophie, they said, and, while they may not agree on each specific issue, they value the give-and-take of discussion.

School-board elections don’t involve political parties, but, in the past in Guilderland, two or three candidates have often run together, sometimes on slates with specific agendas or platforms.

Both Towle-Hilt and O’Connell said, while they were coordinating their campaigns, they would not describe themselves as being on the same slate.
O’Connell, a lawyer who is staying home to raise her children, is running for a second term, she said earlier, because she has learned a lot about being a school-board member in her first three years. "I feel I almost owe it to the community," she said.
She also wants to be part of the search this summer for a new superintendent to replace Gregory Aidala, who is retiring in the fall. "We need someone who is not going to be a steward of this district but will lead us into the future," she said.
O’Connell is most proud of "advancing the discussion on nutrition, wellness, and good health practices" and is also pleased with the district’s recent change in bidding for services from professionals like lawyers and architects.
Her goals for her next term include "better communication amongst school-board members, the community, and parents," and "a return to civility."
She said, "There have been lapses of courtesy, and rudeness to fellow school-board members and administrators...Our conduct needs to be above reproach."

Barbara Fraterrigo

Barbara Fraterrigo, of Ableman Avenue, says she’s running again because she just loves being on the school board.

Fraterrigo, who works as a manager of a doctor’s office, is both a mother and grandmother.

She could not be reached this week but told The Enterprise earlier that, in her decade on the board, she is most proud of the improvement in communication with the public. She cited an added public comment period at meetings, televised meetings, and, most recently, coffee klatches, where board members chat with passers-by.
"Lots of times," Fraterrigo said of her tenure on the board, "I had points of view not shared by anybody."
She was, for example, the only board member to initially vote against the continued employment of a teacher and coach whom some parents said had repeatedly called their daughters "sluts." Later, after considerable public outcry, the board reversed itself, offering the teacher a settlement to leave.

And, three years ago, Fraterrigo was the only board member who did not reject the idea of setting up an advisory board to study reading curriculum, as proposed by a group of parents who children struggled to read.

One of Fraterrigo’s goals for her next term include community involvement with curriculum, perhaps having citizens serve on cabinets.