Press Room

High-achieving Lakeland grads rally behind congressional hopeful

North County News, October 12, 2005
By Rita J. King

Perhaps the best way to understand the heart of a politician is to examine the minds of those running his campaign.

Ben Shuldiner, 28, a Lakeland High School alumnus from Crompond, is hoping to take Congresswoman Sue Kelly’s seat with an innovative grassroots campaign that includes some of Lakeland’s brightest.

Ellen Monten, whose sons are friends with Shuldiner, said “both young and old are drawn to him.”

“We contribute money and time to Ben’s campaign because we believe that he can truly represent this area in Congress. Ben’s integrity and attitude toward life are what will make him a fine congressman. Hi is a level-headed person, an honest person, and that is what our country needs,” Monten said.

One of Monten’s sons, Jonathan, was a lifeguard with Shuldiner one summer at Mohegan Colony. The following summer, she said, Shuldiner and Jonathan Monten “jumped into Tony Castro’s campaign for Westchester district attorney, and we saw a lot of Ben. We heard about his hopes and plans, and we’ve seen how the first stage has come to fruition in his High School of Public Service.”

The school of which Monten speaks might well be the most notable accomplishment in Shuldiner’s roster of achievement, campaign volunteer Alex Marcopoulos explained.

Shuldiner graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, according to Marcopoulos, with a degree in history and science (focus on 20th-century American history and Educational Psychology). While pursing a full undergraduate course load, he also took graduate-level courses in education and received his teaching credentials.

After graduating from Harvard, Shuldiner won the Stowe-Harvard Fellowship to begin his teaching career in England. He then returned to New York and earned his master’s degree in Education Administration from Baruch City College while teaching at Erasmus Hall, a troubled, inner-city high school.

As a history teacher at Erasmus, Shuldiner more than doubled the passing rate of his students on the History Regents Exam and was quickly promoted to chair of the History Department.

“His experience at Erasmus solidified his belief that students deserved a better education than the public school system was providing,” Marcopoulos noted.

Shuldiner has not been content to sit back and criticize, however, and decided instead to take action.

In 2002, Shuldiner received a grant to build a high school that better reflected his vision of a fair public education system. His innovative vision for public education became reality in the fall of 2003, when he opened the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn.

His dream was funded by the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, and this grant was one of only a handful given nationwide.

“The school provides rigorous academic training while cultivation citizenship through community service. When the school opened, Shuldiner became the youngest public high school principal in New York State,” Marcopoulos said. “Ben’s visionary leadership and outstanding managerial skills have brought the school rapid success.”

The High School for Public Service boasts a 97% passing rate on the Regents Exam. The school also has a 94% attendance rate, one of the highest in the region. Each and every one of Shuldiner’s students engages in the community: teaching kindergarteners to read, volunteering at soup kitchens, and organizing coat drives.

Shuldiner, a hemophiliac, has been recognized nationally for his achievements. In 2003 he was selected as the keynote speaker for the National Hemophilia Conference, an organization he has worked with for years. He was also recently chosen from a nation-wide pool as the recipient of the Jefferson Award for the Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under. This award has honored the public service of prominent young Americans such as Dr. Sally Ride, Lance Armstrong, and Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America.

Marcopoulos, 23, graduated from Walter Panas High School in 2000 and was a member of the Lakeland Debate Team for four years.

“I coached debate there for all four years of my undergraduate studies at NYU and last year worked in more formal regard as assistant director of debate and as a long-term replacement for a history teacher at Lakeland that was our on maternity leave,” Marcopoulos explained.

It was during that time that Radha Iyengar, Shuldiner’s campaign manager, and his mentor as a young debater in high school contacted him about Shuldiner.

“Bring concerned with education, and knowing the incredible pool of talent and IQ points that I would be working with, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help out the campaign in any regard possible,” Marcopoulos said.

“Upon arrival at Tulane, I swore off debate and the campaign in order to focus on my studies,” he said.

Fate, coupled with Hurricane Katrina only three weeks into his time in New Orleans had other plans for him. He took Iyengar’s call to duty to heat and joined forces again with the Shuldiner campaign.

Iyengar, who graduated from Lakeland High School in 1998, has since received a bachelor’s degree form MIT and plans to complete her Ph.D. in economics form Princeton in June 2006.

Before joining the Shuldiner campaign, Iyengar worked doing policy research at the Council of Economic Advisors in the White House (in 2000, under President Clinton), at the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and most recently with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, providing research support during its campaign to have the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized.

“I have spent the last few years surrounded by political figures and policy advocated and these experiences have only bolstered the belief I have in Ben as the best candidate for Congress in the 19th Congressional District,” Iyengar said. “I was excited when he decided to run for Congress, largely because the importance I place on high quality public education.”

Jonathan Monten, 26, is a colleague of Iyengar’s who works on Shuldiner’s campaign. He grew up in Mohegan Colony in the Town of Cortlandt, graduated from Walter Panas in 1997, and is currently a Ph.D. student in the department of government at Georgetown University.

“I have been part of Ben's campaign since the moment he decided to run, and do assorted jobs such as write letters, do background research on policy issues such as Indian Point, recruit volunteers and help organize,” Monten said.

“I have perhaps a unique perspective on Ben's campaign because I am both a lifelong friend of Ben and a product of the Lakeland debate program,” Monten said.

While the pair has known each other since childhood, they became reacquainted when hired as lifeguards at the community beach in the summer of 1998.

“Ben and I quickly discovered a common interest in politics, history, and baseball, and have been very close friends ever since. Out mothers a local story-telling festival every year. I knew his grandfather, who had live in the Colony for over 40 years, very well. My parents think of Ben as another member of our family. I introduced Ben to many of my friends from the debate team, including Jim Wilson, Christopher Fenton, Radha Iyengar, and Alex Marcopoulos, most of whom embraced his decision to run for Congress and are now active members of our campaign organization,” Monten said.

Monten explained his personal reasons for supporting the campaign:

“Ben and I realized very early that the problem with the local Democrats is not their positions on policy, but their inability to organize. We had previously volunteered for some local campaigns together, including Tony Castro in 2001, and often heard the same thing: that the only way to win is to raise money and advertise on television, and that party politics was virtually dead in our area. In our casual conversations, we agreed that a good campaign must create a large volunteer organization, actively seek out people, and try to sell our ideas to as many people as possible. We saw the consistent inability to our party to do this as an incredible failure. As a result, I think Ben runs the model of what an American political campaign should look like.”

He cited Shuldiner’s “tremendous sense of history” as another reason for his support.

“The Mohegan Colony has a rich history of political activism, not all of which we agree with,” Monten said. “But as children we grew up around many of the older generation, including Ben’s grandparents, who had participated directly in this history, and we believe that in some small way we are recovering and contributing to a legacy we share as members of a community. More broadly, we recognize that the Hudson Valley has a long history of political moderation, which is now being destroyed by a Republican congresswoman who appears to be controlled by an increasingly extreme national party.”

Shuldiner is no “young dreamer,” according to Jim Wilson, who also devotes his time to the campaign.

Wilson graduated from Walter Panas High School as valedictorian in 1998. He was a debater for the Lakeland Debate Team for four years, and as a senior won the New York State Policy Debate championship with fellow Shuldiner campaign worker Radha Iyengar and was the top individual speaker in New York State.

On the debate team, Monten, Marcopoulos and many others, some of whom are now working for the Shuldiner campaign, became friends.

“While at Harvard, I grew to know Ben as an active voice in progressive campus politics, and (perhaps unusually at Harvard) and a man with principled convictions tempered by good sense and a willingness to engage in dialogue with others,” Wilson said, adding that Shuldiner’s work as the founder of the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn “reveals his entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Ben is no idle young dreamer, but a sensible, accomplished man of principle. He combines commitment to equality, tolerance and compassion with pragmatism and efficiency, and so I was happy to work for him,” who graduates summa cum laude from Harvard in 2002, said. He is now jointly pursuing a Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton, and a law degree at Yale Law School.

“I was also pleased to note that Ben chose to fill his campaign staff with fellow locals from the 19th District. Ben shares my view that politics--particularly in the U.S. Congress--is local, and that representatives are meant to communicate our needs to Washington, rather than vice versa. Ben, and the campaign staff, has also been great in engaging local students in the political process, thus leading a great practical lesson in democracy.”

Lakeland High School alumnus Matt Mutino, first-year student at University of Chicago, is a fellow debater who jumped at the chance to work on behalf of Shuldiner. Currently on leave to pursue his studies, Mutino is looking forward to rejoining the campaign effort next summer.

“I personally feel that the greatest challenge facing this country today is improving the public education system, to ensure that the citizens of tomorrow are equipped with the abilities and knowledge necessary to compete in a global marketplace,” Mutino said, “and to allow for greater upward social mobility across the ever growing divide between rich Americans and poor Americans. Ben is more than qualified to begin developing comprehensive policies at the national level that will do just that.”