Doug Cerrato announced his campaign for Kings Park School Board on February 8, where he will likely face off against incumbents Pam DeFord or Dan Tew. Cerrato is running a parallel campaign with Jamie Lelle.
Cerrato attended NYU for theatre before becoming a stockbroker in the early 2000s. Afterward, he started working for J.P. Morgan in 2007. Over the past four years, he has run his own financial advisory firm in Huntington Village. The firm has since relocated to Kings Park.
A Huntingtonian by birth, Doug settled in Kings Park nine years ago with his wife, Amanda, and now has two children.
Like many people, Cerrato became interested in the Board of Education (BOE) approximately two years ago and with the idea of running shortly thereafter. With this interest came attendance at BOE meetings, in which Cerrato felt an ‘immediate disconnect’ on behalf of the sitting BOE members. Cerrato described the BOE’s behavior towards him at his first meeting as making a parent who wanted to get involved in the community “being made to feel unwelcome.”
Cerrato feels this disconnect extends to the curriculum, which he argues isn’t closely monitored by the current board. Cerrato points to when his seven-year-old son searched the term police officer on an educational portal and found “social justice initiatives that are needed to address police violence” as the first result. After bringing this to the attention of the current board, the content was adjusted for different age groups. He found other objectionable content on the web portal, ‘BrainPOP’ and ‘the Discovery app.’
A major sticking point during these past two years for Cerrato has been the lack of “freedom of choice.” “We all wore masks; I wore masks; I am fully vaccinated,” said Cerrato, “ because it was a choice I made for my business.” “So immediately people think I’m an anti-vaxer or anti-masker. I never was. I wore them when I needed to wear them. I am pro-making that decision as an individual, and I am pro parents making that decision for their child.”
“I want to keep the state agencies, department of health, teachers’ unions out of our schools.”
On the issue of the budget, Cerrato wishes the budget was better, but for the sake of having uninterrupted services, he urges parents to vote yes. He hopes that with his participation in future budgets, more “prudence” will be exercised “without sacrificing the quality of education.”
One major point Cerrato told The Messenger, that he also stresses in his campaign literature: the size of the Kings Park Central School District’s administration ,relative to neighboring school districts. “The enrollment in Kings Park is down 30%” over the last ten years, said Cerrato. “…in that same time period, the budget is up 30%.”
“The Smithtown School District maintains 12 buildings; we maintain six buildings…Smithtown has approximately 8,700 students; we have approximately 2,800 students.” When he compares administrators “apple-to-apples,” Cerrato is of the opinion that Kings Park doesn’t need the same number of executive administrators as the Smithtown Central School District, which it currently has.
His plan is not to renew the contract for one of these executive positions when the contract comes to an end and invest that money, which he calculates to be 1% of the district budget, to every staff member.
According to his review of the budget, this would equate to 1,600 dollars per staff member, which would be a 4%-5% raise for bus drivers in the district-owned bus company.
This would also include paraprofessionals, teachers, etc. Additionally, he wants community-run steering committees utilizing local professionals to find additional cost savings for the school district to decrease the cost per pupil of education. They would submit plans to the BOE for approval and implementation. Cerrato also stated that he wants a “more robust” music program in the district.
Prior to his interest in the BOE, Cerrato was active in the district through involvement with the secret reader program, the ‘Daddy Daughter Dance,’ and other school functions. He hopes that with his and Jamie Lelle’s ascendence to the board, there will be more deliberation on important topics.
[Editor’s Note: This article does not constitute an endorsement. We will cover all willing candidates for the Kings Park Central School District before the election. For side-by-side comparisons, check out our website at www.messengerpapers.com.]
