Much Common Ground Among Hastings Board Candidates

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Pictured: Lower left: Elizabeth Adinolfi Lower center: Maureen Lennon-Santana Top right: David Weinstein Top left: moderator Bottom right: ASL signer Not pictured: Rochelle Nelson

May 17, 2025

By Jeff Wilson–

Hastings-on-Hudson’s school board candidates made their positions known at a May 7 Candidates’ Forum, later presented on YouTube by the League of Women Voters of the Rivertowns. Three of the four hopefuls were on hand for the 90-minute event, all of them vying for two open seats on the seven-member board. The election will be on May 20.

The candidates–Maureen Lennon-Santana, Elizabeth Adinolfi and David Weinstein (Rochelle Nelson was absent)—were asked to give one-and-a-half-minute answers to questions submitted by the LWV and the Hastings PTSA. Because their responses revealed that they share many viewpoints, voters may have a hard time choosing a candidate.

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Lennon-Santana is an incumbent running for a second term. The 20-year Hastings resident and mother of two, who joined the board in 2022, is also a senior leader at the U.S. General Services Administration. Lennon-Santana’s experience on the board enabled her to speak with more familiarity on school matters and budget issues than her opponents. Of the three candidates, Adinolfi, an attorney and mother of two who has lived in Hastings for 13 years, was the most critical of the school system’s status quo. Although she praised the “tight-knit community” with heavy involvement in the schools and strong teachers and administrators, Adinolfi took the district to task for what she believes is a less-than-rigorous curriculum (“The children have been shortchanged,” she charged), a focus on “unhelpful projects that don’t contribute to knowledge or learning,” a literacy project that “has left children struggling” and an inadequate response to bullying.

Weinstein, a Hastings native (1996 graduate of HHS) and media executive who moved away and then returned to raise his child here, can lay claim to a strong legacy of community service in the village. Both his parents served on boards, his wife has spent ten years on the PTSA and Weinstein himself has since 2018 been a volunteer with the Hastings Fire Department (which he implored listeners to join). More of an optimist than Adinolfi, Weinstein expressed trust in school officials to “do the right thing” when crafting the budget, for instance.

All three candidates approved of the proposed budget. (As an incumbent, Lennon-Santana helped formulate it and gave a few details on items like class size and AP programs.) Adinolfi and Weinstein both gave credit to the board for its attentiveness to public reaction to the budget and willingness to trim it.

A question was raised about the upcoming June 17 Hastings capital bond referendum. Here again, Lennon-Santana had the inside track and could speak about specifics like allegedly crumbling buildings. “Our facilities are falling apart,” she said. Both Lennon-Santana and Adinolfi agreed that if the bond fails to pass, the board should have a district-wide forum immediately to get community input as to why it failed in order to re-work it before losing state funding. Adinolfi declared that Hastings needs to increase its commercial tax base, which she claims is the lowest of all the rivertowns. “You have to support community development to make [capital] improvements,” she said. Weinstein stated that whether the bond passes or fails, it’s the will of the village and he only hoped that in the event of failure, the community can come together and find “find solutions for the future in a respectful way.”

As for how the district handles incidents of bias, all three declined to give an opinion, since they all correctly noted that such incidents are handled privately. Weinstein advocated for a “culture of respect” and stated that “research shows that effective school-based programs focus on changing group norms, not punishing individuals.”’

How to help struggling students? Make sure they have the resources they need, all three agreed. The board, the administration, the assistant supervisor for curriculum, special ed—were all invoked as positive interventionists for struggling students. Notably absent from their listing of “first responders” were the students themselves, or their parents.

In summary, Maureen Lennon-Santana is running on her experience (“I’ve already done it and I can do it again”); David Weinstein is running on his commitment to service (as a firefighter, for example, and a friend to the Youth Council) and his love of Hastings, and Elizabeth Adinolfi is running to help solve the many problems she sees in the schools.

The Tuesday vote runs from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Cochran Gym, Hastings High School.

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