Two school districts, two very different board elections on May 20

By JEFF MORRIS

Though they are right next door and share parts of the same towns, the Bedford Central and Katonah-Lewisboro school districts are quite different from one another — the latest example being this year’s school board elections.

When the deadline passed at 5 p.m. Monday for submitting petitions to run for school board, BCSD had seven candidates vying for four open seats. KLSD, meanwhile, had three candidates running for three seats: essentially, an uncontested election.

Voters in each district will decide the outcome Tuesday, May 20, when the 2025-26 budgets and other propositions will also be on the ballot.

Bedford Central

In BCSD, incumbent and board President Gilian Klein and incumbents Blakeley Lowry, Amal Shady and Robert Mazurek will face off against newcomers Leo Sposato, Prasad Krishnan and Eric Florio.

Of the four seats that are open, three are for full three-year terms, running July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2028. The fourth is a one-year-plus term that will run from May 21, 2025 to June 30, 2026. That is the remainder of the term of Kristine Stoker, who resigned from the board May 24, 2024, after having been elected in 2023. 

Mazurek, who had originally been elected in 2021 and planned to step down from the board at the end of the 2023-24 school year, agreed to stay on for a year to fill the vacancy. He was appointed by the board to fill the open seat until this year’s election, and that seat will be filled immediately following the election in order to maintain a full seven-member board.

However, which of the candidates will actually receive a three-year term, and whose term will expire in 2026, is entirely up to the voters. 

According to district rules, the three highest vote-getters will receive the full three-year terms. The fourth highest vote-getter will receive the one-year-plus term.

All three of the first-time candidates live in Mount Kisco. Sposato is director of communications for the Yorktown Central School District; Krishnan is an investment professional with a financial services firm; and Florio is a sergeant supervisor of an NYPD detective squad.

The League of Women Voters of Northeast Westchester will host a candidate forum Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m. in the Fox Lane Middle School’s Suzanne Grant Theater. 

Questions for the candidate forum should be sent to LWVNEW@gmail.com. Submission deadline is Tuesday, April 29.

The Recorder intends to run a virtual roundtable Q&A with the candidates prior to the election.

Katonah-Lewisboro

With two veteran trustees, Rory Burke and board President Julia Hadlock, having decided not to run again, only one incumbent will be on the ballot: Jon Poffenberger, who has been on the board since May of last year, when he was elected to fill the remainder of an unexpired term. 

The two new candidates are Arwen Thomas Belloni, a mortgage account manager who lives in South Salem, and Carolyn Snell, a marketing manager from Goldens Bridge.

The Parent Council is expected to host a candidates night Monday, May 5, at 7 p.m., with details to follow. 

The Recorder intends to run a virtual roundtable Q&A with the candidates prior to the election.