Dmytro Fedkowskyj, a Middle Village native who served as the Queens borough president’s appointee on the city Panel for Educational Policy, is considering a primary run against Assemblywoman Marge Markey. Photo courtesy Dominick Totino
Following five years of marathon city meetings that often dragged on into the early morning hours and intense negotiations with Mayor Bloomberg’s administration over school closures and co-locations, Middle Village native Dmytro Fedkowskyj is looking to potentially take his experience on the city Panel for Educational Policy about 150 mile north – to Albany.
Fedkowskyj, who served for a little more than five years as Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s appointee on the PEP, a decision-making group that votes on education plans for the city’s public schools, said he is considering launching a bid for Assemblywoman Marge Markey’s (D-Maspeth) seat representing the 30th Assembly District.
“I’ve been a Queens resident my entire life, and I’m excited about the opportunity to serve in the Assembly district where I’ve lived since childhood,” Fedkowskyj said in a statement. “I’m still exploring all possible options and will make a decision relatively soon.”
The district, previously represented by U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) until 1998, covers Maspeth, Woodside, and parts of Middle Village, Long Island City, Astoria, and Sunnyside. Markey has represented the area for 15 years and has been challenged by Republican Anthony Nunziato but has consistently defeated him. She landed close to 70 percent of the vote in the 2012 general election. If Fedkowskyj decides to jump in the race, he would face Markey in the 2014 Democratic primary.
Mike Armstrong, a spokesman for Markey, did not comment directly on Fedkowskyj, but did say that if there is a primary election, “Marge will certainly be running for reelection.”
In addition to his time on the PEP, Fedkowskyj currently serves on Community Board 5, for which he sits on the Land Use and Education committees, and was previously a member of Community District Education Council 24 – which covers schools in mid-Queens neighborhoods.
Bill Kregler, who served on CEC 24 with Fedkowskyj – and continues to do so, described the Middle Village native as being “extremely educated in the field of education and extremely dedicated to the children of Queens.”
“Dmytro has a way of working with people to get things done,” he said. “He understands the field of politics… I think he’d be a great advocate for the community: He’s young, he’s a family man, and he has a background in accounting. I’d love to see him in a field like that – it’d be a breath of fresh air.”
Angela O’Hehir, the past Parent Teacher Association at PS 58 in Maspeth, too threw her support behind Fedkowskyj, with whom she worked to get the Maspeth High School built.
“He was really an advocate for the parents,” she said. “We found the building where Maspeth High School is now and he worked very closely with us. He put us through a hard battle, and we won.”
Advocates of building the new high school had faced opposition in the community, with some residents airing concerns that the facility would draw a flood of commuters.
“He pointed out that it’s good for the people in the community,” O’Hehir said of Fedkowskyj. “…It was a big job. We had to go through many meetings – he was always very diplomatic.”
Should Fedkowskyj opt to run, and if he won, he would face a political landscape in Albany that has grown increasingly weary of the power wielded by New York City’s mayor. For example, while many legislators have said they would not entirely overhaul mayoral control of public schools – a power which state lawmakers handed to former Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 – a number of them have lambasted Bloomberg over everything from his emphasis on standardized testing to a focus on closing large community high schools and replacing them with smaller, more niche schools. And while there is a new mayoral administration, lawmakers have continued to argue that the mayor holds too much power when it comes to decisions regarding public schools.
To address these concerns, Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Oakland Gardens) is sponsoring a bill that would change the makeup of the PEP, which is dominated by mayoral appointees and had been seen as a rubber stamp for Bloomberg. Weprin’s bill would keep the number of appointees at 13, but the mayor would no longer have the majority of appointments.
By Anna Gustafson
