082004 Jason Black leaving district board

Bedford Central School board member Jason Black will be leaving the district, according to Bedford Central School District Superintendent Debra Jackson in an announcement yesterday. Dr. Jackson said she anticipated that Mr. Black, who received a job transfer to Connecticut, would be departing before the start of the school year.

Mr. Black was elected to the school board in May 2003, winning the seat vacated by trustee Joseph Whelan. He defeated fellow Mount Kisco resident Betty Negron-Ramirez. Mr. Black received a total of 1,251 votes districtwide, as opposed to Ms. NegronRamirez's 837 votes district-wide.

Mr. Black and his wife, Frances Schroeder, have three children. Mr. Black works as the manager of editorial operations for the PricewaterhouseCoopers auditing firm in New York City. Prior, Mr. Black was the business editor for Internet World magazine. He has also been senior editor of Ticker magazine, a monthly trade magazine for stockbrokers and financial planners; managing editor for Why magazine, a quarterly publication; and communications manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

Mr. Black also volunteers his editorial skills to Angelwish, a non-profit organization that helps to grant wishes to children living with HIV/AIDS through a network of children's hospitals across the country.

In 2001, Mr. Black achieved a relative degree of notoriety when he and his wife sought "corporate sponsorship" for their third child. Seeking to move out of their two-bedroom apartment and buy a new home on only one income, Mr. Black said during his school board election run that he and his wife thought it was an "innovative approach to an age-old problem." He was sure that many other parents had commiserated with each other about their lack of funds in search of a solution.

The couple never pursued the idea of corporate sponsorship after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That changed everyone's priorities, he said. "It just seemed to all of us, my wife and I and the company that we were working with, that it just wasn't the right time to do something like that," said Mr. Black.

Mr. Black said that he had received media inquiries from all over the world. "We did major TV, major radio, every newspaper you can think of," he said in 2003. "It was on the wire services, like the Associated Press, several times."

Dr. Jackson said this week that the board will provide information to the public on the vacant seat. The board would then appoint a new member to serve in Mr. Black's place. An election would be held in May 2005, at which time the elected candidate would serve the remainder of Mr. Black's term.