With incumbent Michael Culotta out of the race, new candidates Lauren Persic and Victor Ferrante are running against each other for a seat on Floral Park-Bellerose’s Board of Education.
Persic, an oncology nurse with four children between the ages of 2 and 12, and Ferrante, a retired NYPD officer with two sons in the district, are both hoping to bring their ideas to the school board.
Persic said that if elected, she would work to dedicate more resources to the district’s special education programs as well as to expanding the district’s accelerated program, called SPARK, to ensure all students with different learning styles get the support they need. She said she currently volunteers regularly with the district’s PTAs and at school events like wellness and book fairs and is on the district’s Shared Decision Making Committee, which is working to plan a May multicultural fair. She was on the Strategic Planning Committee last year.
Ferrante, who has lived in Floral Park for 10 years, said his top priorities if elected would include reassessing and improving the district’s safety and security plan, ensuring taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted in the budgeting process, increasing board transparency and teacher involvement in school board decisions and ensuring IEPs are accessible for students to obtain. In his free time, he coaches intramural boys soccer in the area, chaperones field trips and is the chair of the non-profit Tumbleweeds Foundation, which fund-raises for residents who are having a difficult time financially.
Culotta, who has been on the board since 2019, chose not to file to run for re-election this year, creating the opening Persic and Ferrante both seek to fill. However, Rosemarie Peltonen, who has served on the board since 2022, is seeking re-election. She is running unopposed for her seat and also serves on the Sewanhaka Central High School District’s board.
Prior to serving on the board, Peltonen worked as a New York City public school teacher for 14 years, then as Floral Park-Bellerose teacher from 2004 to 2021. After retiring, she said she couldn’t stay away from the district.
“I really just love the school district so much. I needed to be involved in it in some capacity,” she said as to why she ran in 2022 and why she’s running again. “I thought that my background in education would be valuable to the position, and it was really just my deep appreciation and love for the community and the schools that motivated me.”
Persic said she was motivated to run for school board this year because she anticipated having kids in the district for more than another decade and wanted to help positively impact their education.
“When we had our fourth and final child, I realized, ‘well, we are really going to be here for a very long time,” said Persic, who has live in Floral Park for 13 years. “Knowing that I have someone in seventh grade now and someone who’s not even in the schools, we are going to be here for a while.”
Her run is preceded by her progressively increasing involvement in the district, moving from volunteering on both of the district’s PTAs to district-wide planning committees.
“I began getting involved in PTA events at our kids’ school, then district-wide committees,” she explained. “I thought, well, if I’m here in attendance [at board meetings], I might as well be here in a decision-making capacity.”
Ferrante said a desire to give back to his community is what motivated him to run.
“If it was a paid position, I would not be running,” he said. “I just want to do the right thing by my family and the people in this community.”
He served in the NYPD for roughly three decades, where he acted as the commanding officer of the crime scene unit and did budget management, facilities and building work for the force. He continues to support the force on a peer counselor hotline, called POPPA, which helps officers considering suicide and experiencing other mental health crises
He believes that experience will translate well to improving the district’s security and budget.
“I have a strong feeling that taxpayer dollars should not be wasted, and I would be very happy to review the ongoing contracts within our school district in an effort to provide transparency to our community,” Ferrante said. “I would also really love to get more involvement from the actual people doing the job every day, to get their suggestions on what we could do to fix the schools,” he added, referring to his hope to include teachers more prominently in board decisions.
District residents can cast their ballots in the school board race, and on the school district’s budget, on May 20 between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. at both Floral Park Bellerose School and John Lewis Childs School.
