Two incumbents, one newcomer up for election to Riverhead school board this year

Two incumbents and one newcomer will vie for two open seats on the Riverhead Board of Education this year.

Board President Laurie Downs and Vice President Matthew Wallace are seeking reelection and Andrew Nadeau, a 2007 Riverhead graduate, is running for the first time.

Downs was elected to her second term in 2019. Board members elected her president of the board the last two school years. Before joining the board, Downs filmed board meetings for broadcast on cable and reported on board activities for the WRIV “Dawn Patrol” radio show. She has two adult children who went through the district and is a former PTO president.

Downs said she is running for reelection because she is concerned about the education of the district’s students after the pandemic. She said issues like mask mandates are behind the district and it needs to get back on track educating its students. 

“We have a new superintendent that’s on the right path, and I want to work with him, and I want to straighten things out,” Downs said. “It’s taken me years to get the ninth period back in. I started that on the outside and continued and I got it. It hasn’t come easy. Change doesn’t happen overnight. And sometimes along the way, during change, hiccups happen, but hiccups can be corrected. And that’s what I’m aiming for.”

Wallace, a licensed practical nurse at Northwell Family Health in Riverhead, was elected to his first term on the board in 2019 and was elected vice president of the board this school year. He is an EMT and volunteer firefighter in the Wading River Fire Department, where he previously served as captain. He currently a fire commissioner of the Wading River Fire District. He has four children — two who attend Riverhead High School and two who are graduates of the district. 

“The last three years had been very tough, most recently the last two with the whole COVID situation and everything else,” Wallace said. “There’s a lot of stuff still to be done. I want to get these kids to back to someone to normalcy. I want them to have a great experience in school.”

“With us going to the nine period day next year, we’re offering so much more. And it’s a great opportunity for the children, and I think I want to continue to assist and help get that done with the new superintendent Dr. Tornatore,” Wallace said. “He’s made some great improvements already, I think. There’s some changes being made and I think it’s for the positive.”

Nadeau is an independent duty corpsman in the U.S. Navy. He is currently being discharged for refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine. He has three young children who are not yet of school age.

“My goal is to be a representative for parents and students of the school district,” Nadeau said.

Nadeau is running on issues related to COVID-19, including opposing mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations and mask mandates, both which are currently not in place in New York. Nadeau said he served as a mid-level provider, a healthcare role, at the United States Naval Academy and said he saw many adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine. He said he does not think the COVID-19 vaccine is safe or effective, and thinks it is “a big pharma scam.”

COVID-19 vaccines are tested for safety and efficacy by researchers before and after they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in people. The vaccines are effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I understand my message is a bit jarring and unpalatable to many who have been going through — we’ve all been going through this [pandemic] for a long time; two years plus. But I’m coming from a place of love and although it might be anecdotal knowledge, it is knowledge and it is clinical experience I’ve seen and I think that people deserve the truth and that these kids, they’re being misguided.”

“I don’t know what kind of generations of people it’s going to create. Because we haven’t masked kids for two years straight. We don’t really know what the hell that’s going to do. I mean, we haven’t done it before. So to continue these policies would just be, without the data, just seems ridiculous,” Nadeau said.

Nadeau said he does not oppose the vaccines currently required to enter public schools “in a medical sense,” but opposed their requirement to enroll in school. 

Nadeau said he will vote no on the budget this year because he opposes any tax increase. The district’s budget proposal includes a 1% tax levy increase.

“There’s a lot of hard economic times on our horizon and I think that we’re going to have to just do more with less. I think we can privately fundraise and I think there’s a lot of fat to be trimmed on the budget,” Nadeau said.

Trustees on the board are elected for three-year terms. The position is unpaid. The budget vote and trustee election will take place on May 17.