Having served on the Port Jervis District school board for 14 years, William Onofry is running for another three-year term to continue serving the community he grew up in.
A believer in a diverse school board, Onofry said his background as a home builder would contribute to more-informed board decisions in capital projects.
He appreciates the makeup of the current board, whose members hail from diverse fields of law enforcement, health care, education, town government, and business.
“Our board is so good because it is so diverse,” Onofry told The Epoch Times. “For example, what I lack in my education knowledge, Kara Raap helps make it up.”
Raap, the vice president of the school board, works as an assistant principal at Presidential Park Elementary School in Middletown.
Onofry said that being on the board also makes for more support of career and technical programs.
“I never went to college, and I was in trade,” Onofry said. “So, it always interests me to see what we are doing for students who aren’t college material or like working with their hands.”
“There is a need for all the different trades,” he said, adding that it concerns him that few young people in the area go into careers such as mason work now.
A Port Jervis native, Onofry grew up in the carpentry world, as his father built houses for a living.
After graduating from the local high school in 1971, he went straight to work, including a stint as a building inspector at the city’s public works department.
He then moved on to a construction company before opening his own firm in the 1990s.
With a small crew, he built custom homes in the city, the Town of Deerpark, and nearby states including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“I love building and working with my hands,” Onofry said. “It was very rewarding when you are done and see what you’ve accomplished.”
In 2001, shortly after his youngest child graduated from Port Jervis High School, Onofry was asked to finish a term for a school board member who had left.
He then ran for and sat on the board intermittently until around 2016.
In 2020, as the district’s plan of renovating the old middle school building spread around town, Onofry had the itch to run again, he said.
“I have to be honest that I was not in favor of this project in the first place,” Onofry said. “I was concerned with the amount of money we were to spend on an existing building and whether it was even safe to do that.”
He ran and won a seat with the second most votes, at 1,055, according to an article by Times Herald-Record at the time.
Once back on the school board, Onofry soon learned the ins and outs of the project, including the fact that the district could get far more state aid in renovating than building anew due to its dwindling enrollment, he said.
The enrollment was around 3,500 when he first got on the board and had since dropped to about 2,400.
“I’m totally invested in the project now,” he said. “It is going to be beautiful when it is done.”
Largely funded by district money and state aid, the renovation was estimated to cost nearly $55 million.
Another reason that Onofry returned to the board three years ago and is running again is to continue to witness student success, he said.
One recent example is the eighth-grade student Markus Ferrara’s winning first place in the annual spelling bee held by the Orange-Ulster Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
“The most rewarding thing about being on a school board is to see what these kids can accomplish,” he said, adding that it was also what he missed most during the years he was away.
