Four candidates seek single seat on school board
RED HOOK, N.Y. » Four firsttime candidates will square off May 15 for a single seat on the Red Hook Board of Education.
Voting will be noon to 9 p.m. in Mill Road Elementary School.
On the ballot will be Lauren Arcomano, of 223 Pitcher Lane; Dean Button, of 15 Spring Lake Road; Kate Kortbus, of 10 Sunrise Drive; and Daniel J. Rinaldi, of 8 Southview Lane.
The seat currently is held by Ed Mercier, who did not file a petition for run for reelection.
Lauren Arcomano
Arcomano, 50, is executive director of Red Hook Community Center.
“We need to look at the new curriculum for mental health that we’ll be implementing and look at a cohesive ways integrate that into each grade level,” she said of her priorities.
Also, “we need to look at how special education students’ needs are being met within the district and find ways to integrate them into our community rather than relying on BOCES.”
Arcomano graduated in 1980 from York Preparatory School in New York City and earned a bachelor’s degree in human services from Edison State College in Trenton, N.J., in 1985.
She is a member of the Red Hook school district’s leadership team.
She has lived in the district for four years and has two children.
Dean Button
Button, 65, is director of program development at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.
Button said his priority is “trying to help the district cope with increasing demands placed on them from new students and the fact that the students require new and different kinds of teaching and pedagogy, and meeting those needs with resources that are either stagnant or declining.”
Button graduated from Woodstock Community High School in Illinois in 1971, earned a bachelor’s degree in theater in 1975 from Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, earned a master’s degree from Goodman in 1976, received a master’s in environmental studies from Bard College in 1992 and earned a doctorate in environmental studies from Antioch University in Keene, N.H., in 2002.
Button is a youth coach with the Red Hook Soccer Club and a volunteer with Northern Dutchess Aquatic Club.
He has lived in the district for 11 years, and he and his wife, Suzanne, have two children.
Kate Kortbus
Kortbus, 44, is an office manager for Hudson ENT and board chairwoman for The Children’s Foundation of Astor Services for Children and Families.
“We have expanding needs for our special education programs,” she said. “We have obviously a lot of community concern over enhanced safety measures in the school and other needs that students and teachers [have] while state funding continues to not meet our needs.”
Kortbus said the school board “can’t keep going back to the community after the auditorium [proposition], so we’re going to have to be creative and work collaboratively to figure out where our dollars are best spent.”
“I think, for sure, [the district needs to] make sure that all of our current programs are full and meaningful and reallocate resources where needed,” she said.
Kortbus graduated from Fox Lane High School in Bedford,. N.Y., in 1992 and earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania on 1996.
She is a volunteer with the Little Feet Community Preschool, a parent representative on the Red Hook school district’s Building Leadership Tem and a member of the Mill Road Elementary School PT.
She has lived in the district since 2006, and she and her husband, Michael, have four children.
Daniel J. Rinaldi
Rinaldi, 70, is a retired chief financial officer for health care facilities.
“I would hope to help continue with the high level of education services to our children with the budget constraints that are presently upon us,” he said.
Rinaldi also said staying under the state’s tax levy limit
needs to be accomplished by “promoting such things as zero-based budgets, eliminating reserve accounting, looking at outsourcing appropriate services and ensuring adequate audit follow up.”
Rinaldi graduated from Troy High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in health care administration from Russell Sage College, and served in the Army from 1967 to 1973.
He is a board member with the CYO of Red Hook.
He has lived in the Red Hook school district for 14 years, and he and his wife, Maureen Lynch, have three children.