Port Jervis School Board Member Florence Santini Seeks Reelection

Florence Santini at her house in the Town of Deerpark, N.Y., on April 7, 2023. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

Florence Santini, a longtime Deerpark, New York, resident and a fixture in the community, says she’s seeking another school board term to continue serving students and taxpayers.

She first ran for the board in 2004 to address spiraling school taxes, only to find out that the world couldn’t be changed overnight and that the only thing under her control was to keep trying.

While mindful of seniors on fixed incomes that struggle to pay taxes, she also came to look at things from the perspective of students.

“First of all, you have to take care of the students,” Santini told The Epoch Times. “We must make sure that they have all their schooling, all their programs, and all that they need to get by and graduate.”

Port Jervis High School in Port Jervis, N.Y., on April 7, 2023. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

As a board member, she says she has always tried to strike a balance between the two.

“You try to do the best you can,” Santini said. “You try, you keep trying, you don’t stop, and you keep trying to make the best decisions you can—that is it.”

The Port Jervis School District serves families who reside in Deerpark and Port Jervis, New York, in Orange County.

A People Person

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Clifton, New Jersey, Santini moved to the Town of Deerpark in the 1970s to run a restaurant with her husband, Dominick Santini. For more than 20 years, her husband was the cook and Santini the manager at Santini’s Ristorante, an Italian eatery on Route 6 in Port Jervis.

After selling the restaurant, the couple decided to stay in the area they had grown to like.

“You walk down the street, and somebody says hello to you; people are always there to lend a helping hand—this is what this community is like, and this is why we stayed,” she said.

Florence Santini in front of her house in the Town of Deerpark, N.Y., on April 7, 2023. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

Soon, Santini got involved in town government, being elected as tax collector in 1999 and then town clerk in 2002, a post she has held until now.

She enjoys serving the residents as a town clerk, a job much like her role at the Italian eatery, she said.

“It’s like I came from the restaurant, which was a people-person job, to the town clerk, which is also a people-person job,” Santini said. “I treat everyone as a human being; I often say, take your title off—be it a doctor or a lawyer—and everything underneath is the same.”

She’s also involved in various civic and charitable organizations, such as Catholic Daughters, Ladies Auxiliary Veteran of Foreign Wars Post 161, and Hudson Valley Honor Flight.

First School Board Run

In 2004, Santini ran for the school board for the first time when the district proposed a tax increase of more than $1 million, or 8.45 percent.

“I was worried about it,” she said. “If I was worried about this, my next-door neighbor was worried about it, and the person down the street was worried about it.”

Voters defeated the budget and elected Santini and several others to the board. About a month later, voters approved a budget with a lower increase of 6.45 percent.

“I came in with a chip on my shoulder and said, ‘I’m going to do this, this, and this,’” Santini said. “Then I learned what I could do and what I could not do—it was very much of an eye-opener.

Anna S. Kuhl Elementary School in Port Jervis, New York, on April 7, 2023. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

“You have contracts, you have unions, you have your due diligence of taking care of regular classes and kids with special needs. There can be no sway, and those funds have to be there.”

Much to Santini’s dismay, the next budget proposed included a school tax increase, this time by almost a third. After voters defeated that by a 3:2 margin, they approved a reworked budget with a slightly lower boost at 27 percent, according to a Times-Herald Record article at the time.

“After a while, I became humble, and I came to terms with the fact that you could only do so much,” she said. “But you are a voice to be heard. You are talking and trying, not sitting back and just being a yes person.”

Keep Trying

After a pause, Santini ran for school board again in 2014 and was elected to another three-year term.

She was reelected in 2017 and again in 2020, during which she got 1,156 votes, the most among all seven candidates, according to the Times-Herald Record.

In the past 10 years, the district kept the tax levy increase at less than 2 percent, with four years of zero increases, according to a recent presentation by the district administration.

Even so, Santini argues that voters continue to bear the consequences of those dramatic increases.

Port Jervis Middle School is under renovation in Port Jervis, N.Y., on March 8, 2023. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

Running for another term, she said she hopes to continue to serve district residents.

“You don’t get paid, and there is nothing you get from it other than trying to make a difference for the kids and trying to get what our residents of the district need,” Santini said.

If reelected, she says she most looks forward to the completion of the middle school building renovation on Main Street in Port Jervis. At an estimated cost of $55 million, it’s one of the largest capital projects ever undertaken by the district.

“I am going to be proud that students will learn in classrooms that are fresh and bright, they will have enough room in between desks, and they will have a gym that they can use and a nice cafeteria where they eat and take a break.”