New Carmel Schools superintendent hired in same position as father's old job to lead district

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Dr. Erin Meehan-Fairben remembers playing with her older siblings in front of an old one-room school house while they waited for their father – Superintendent Richard Meehan – to finish with late meetings next door at the administration building. "They were nine and seven and I was five," Fairben recalled, "so they would pretty much tease me." Fairben has been a teacher, a professor, assistant principal, principal and director of the New York State School for the Blind. After a long vetting process, the school board decided to hire Fairben earlier this summer to take her father's old job in his old office. Paging through a 1973 yearbook to a page honoring her father who had died that year, Fairben said she will draw from the lessons she learned from him. "Some of the challenges of the 1970s of fiscal crisis and figuring out how to grow a district are still here today," she said during an interview Friday morning in her office. Fairben is facing some new, more modern challenges, too. Last school year, News 12 reported on antisemitic graffiti on campus and racist online videos targeting staff that were shared among students. Fairben is rewriting the district's code of conduct to include "restorative practices," an approach similar to restorative justice for criminal offenders. Restorative practices include deep, honest group discussions about what is happening at school, instead of simply setting rules and enforcing them. "Carmel needs to move forward with restorative practices and really repairing relationships and growing relationships," Fairben said. "That's why I thought I could be a really good fit here." She is fairly sure her father would support her new policies. Fairben – a former special education teacher who lives with dyslexia and did not learn to read until seventh grade – knows a bit about inclusivity. "Allowing an avenue so that all students have a voice is what I want to do," Fairben said. "