Fair Lawn School Board Election: 11 Candidates, Four Seats, Two Slates — and One Name on the Ballot That Has Already Dropped Out
Three full three-year terms and one one-year unexpired term are on Tuesday's ballot in Fair Lawn. The 'Education with Integrity' slate holds the incumbents; the BARK Team is challenging; and Yael Suriel's name will appear even though he has withdrawn.
Fair Lawn's school board race is the most crowded local contest on Bergen County's Tuesday ballot: 11 candidates for four seats on the Board of Education. Eight of them — Veronica Brenner, Jeanne Browne, Angela Kerr, Julie Kossoy, Julie Mahan, Marcy Reiz, Dianna Sopala and Yan Rusanov — are running for three three-year terms. The other three — Dmytro Arshynov, Matthew Correia and Elizabeth Greenfield Estersohn — are running for a separate one-year unexpired term, a distinction that matters on the ballot itself.
The race has organized itself into slates. Browne, Greenfield Estersohn, Kossoy and Mahan run together as 'Education with Integrity' — and three of the four, Browne, Kossoy and Mahan, already sit on the board, with Mahan serving as its president. Against them, Arshynov, Brenner, Kerr and Rusanov run as the BARK Team. Two candidates left gaps in the public record this cycle: Browne did not submit a candidate statement to NorthJersey.com's election coverage, and Sopala did not respond to a request for one.
One more name requires a voter's attention on Tuesday: Yael Suriel appears on the ballot but told NorthJersey.com on Thursday that he has dropped out of the race — a withdrawal that came too late to remove his name. School board terms decided Tuesday will govern Fair Lawn's classrooms for the next three years, and in a four-seat, 11-name field, the margins are usually small enough that the slate discipline on both sides is the whole contest.
