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Embroiled incumbents see differing outcomes in May 19 school board elections across five states
May 21, 2015
By Margaret Koenig & Abbey Smith
Incumbents saw mixed returns among the nation's largest school districts that held Tuesday elections in California, Idaho, New York and Oregon. Ongoing federal investigations, Common Core disputes and superintendent scandals hung over several incumbents, with some surviving the ballot better than others.
Meanwhile, 18 of Pennsylvania's largest school districts held partisan primaries to reduce the field of candidates for their general elections, which will be held November 3, 2015.
A full list of the general and primary election winners in these states may be found at the bottom of this page or by clicking here.
Stats by the state
California
Just one of California's largest school districts, Los Angeles Unified School District, held elections on Tuesday to decide three seats that were not settled in the district's primary on March 3, 2015. District 1 incumbent George J. McKenna III ran unopposed in the primaries and, therefore, did not appear on the general election ballot. His fellow incumbents saw mixed outcomes in the general election. District 7 incumbent Richard A. Vladovic retained his seat. District 3 Tamar Galatzan was unseated by Scott Mark Schmerelson, and District 5 incumbent Bennett Kayser lost to challenger Ref Rodriguez. In total, the school board retained half of the incumbents up for election this year.[1][2]
Idaho
Incumbents in six of Idaho's largest school districts lost at a rate of 44.44 percent in Tuesday's elections. Fourteen seats were up for election, and nine incumbents sought to retain their seats. Four of the five incumbents who were able to retain their seats were unopposed. Mike Vuittonet, the Zone 2 incumbent in West Ada School District, was the only Idaho incumbent to face and defeat a challenger. The other four incumbents who faced challengers were defeated. In total, nine challengers won seats on the Idaho boards.
New York
Thirty-six seats on school boards in 14 of New York's largest school districts were up for election on Tuesday. A total of 22 incumbents and 34 challengers appeared across those ballots. Almost a third of the incumbents were defeated as seven were unseated by challengers. Meanwhile, 21 challengers will join these school boards on July 1, 2015, after successfully winning their respective races.
Wappingers Central School District at-large incumbent Ved Shravah was the most definitively defeated incumbent in these races, placing last in a field of six candidates for three seats on the board. Four other incumbents placed last in their at-large races against four challengers each. They were Pamela Freeman-Resch in Newburgh Enlarged City School District, Michael Donofrio in North Syracuse Central School District and Michael J. Isernia in Sachem Central School District.
Oregon
In Oregon, 44 seats were up for election in 13 of the state's largest school districts. A total of 28 incumbents sought re-election in those races, most of them unopposed, while 88 challengers ran to fill open seats and to challenge sitting board members. In total, 18 challengers secured places in their respective races, and 26 incumbents retained their seats.
Only two incumbents in Oregon lost, one of them by less than a 1 percent margin: Medford School Board Position 5 incumbent Kim Wallan was just 66 votes shy of victorious challenger Michael Campbell. Bobbie Regan, the Zone 3 incumbent in Portland Public Schools, faced three challengers and finished in second place behind challenger Amy Carlsen Kohnstamm.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's largest school districts held primaries for their school boards on Tuesday, as well. The state, one of the few with widespread partisan school board elections, allows candidates to cross-file in more than one party's primary. A majority of the candidates in this year's primaries cross-filed to run in both the Republican and Democratic primaries. The number of candidates who advance from each primary to the general on November 3, 2015, equals the total number of seats up in a race.
Candidates could advance to the general election by winning in one or both primaries. Only three incumbents who ran for re-election failed to advance to the general election: at-large incumbent Basilio Bonilla in Bethlehem Area School District, Region 1 incumbent Jim Duffy in Central Bucks School District and Region 6 incumbent Tyler Tomlinson in Central Bucks School District.
A full list of the candidates who advanced to the general election may be viewed in the candidates section below.
Spotlight: Badly behaved incumbents see a variety of election outcomes
Eugene School District
Eugene School Position 5 Director Jim Torrey was definitively victorious over his two challengers despite the recent attention to his role in the district's superintendent exit controversy. According to emails that are now public, the board allowed former Superintendent Sheldon Berman to craft his own exit plan so that he could evade a negative review. The district is currently in the middle of a lawsuit that it filed with the Register-Guard after deciding not to share email communication between the board and Berman.[3]
Torrey's opponents, Kevin Cronin and David Nickles, spoke out against the board's actions and were highly critical of Torrey's role in the matter. While Torrey has not publicly commented on his involvement with Berman's departure, he says the board has a "deep and abiding respect for Oregon’s public records and public meetings laws.”[4] Despite the controversy, Torrey won re-election with over 59 percent of votes cast in his favor.
Los Angeles Unified School District
The school district was mired in a number of conflicts during the election season, including a federal investigation into a $1.3 billion iPad program that was spearheaded by former superintendent John Deasy and ultimately canceled. Deasy stepped down from his position in October 2014, but the issues surrounding the investigation still influenced the election. Galatzan received a number of criticisms from both voters and her challengers for her support of Deasy while he was in office and for her support of the failed iPad program.[5]
Wappingers Central School District
Two incumbents ran for re-election to their seats in the Wappingers Central School District election in New York, but only Robert Rubin retained his seat. Fellow incumbent Ved Shravah received the least amount of votes out of the six candidates running for the three seats on the ballot.[6] Shravah's candidacy was publicly supported with a number of letters to the editor in the Poughkeepsie Journal, but that did not erase the fact that a petition to remove him from office had been started by citizens of the district in December 2014 on the grounds of conflict of interest. The petition collected only 33 signatures, but its existence added to the negative remnants from Shravah's last re-election bid in 2014.[7][8]
The election had been divisive, including personal attacks and two camps of candidates pitted against each other: those supported by the teachers union and those supported by anti-Common Core groups. Shravah was supported by the teachers union at the time, as were all five candidates who won that year, but the anti-Common Core movement gained traction during the 2014-2015 school year, resulting in 40 percent of students in the district opting out of the state's English and language arts assessments in the spring of 2015. In 2014, only 6 percent of students opted out of the same test.[9][10]
Candidates
Note: An (i) next to a candidate's name indicates incumbent status.
California
Los Angeles Unified School District
|
District 3 |
District 5 |
District 7 |
Idaho
|
Bonneville Joint Coeur d'Alene Public Schools |
Idaho Falls School District 91 Pocatello-Chubbuck |
West Ada School District |
Nampa School District |
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania primaries
The following candidates advanced from the primaries to the general election on November 3, 2015. This symbol, 
, indicates a candidate who won both the Republican and Democratic primaries in a district. A pure red dot, 
, or a pure blue dot, 
, indicates a candidate who won in just one primary. While Pennsylvania allows school board candidates to cross-file, not every candidate filed to run in both party primaries.
See also
- California school board elections, 2015
- Oregon school board elections, 2015
- Idaho school board elections, 2015
- New York school board elections, 2015
- Pennsylvania school board elections, 2015
Footnotes
- ↑ Los Angeles City Clerk, “Election Night Results (Unofficial), March 3, 2015,” accessed March 4, 2015
- ↑ Los Angeles City Clerk, "Election Night Results (Unofficial)," accessed May 20, 2015
- ↑ Register-Guard, "School report draws response," April 30, 2015
- ↑ Register-Guard, "Candidates cite controversy over Berman exit as issue in Eugene School Board race," May 1, 2015
- ↑ LA School Report, "Packed stage, empty house at District 3 ‘game show’ debate," February 13, 2015
- ↑ Wappingers Central School District, "Wappingers Central School District - May 19, 2015," accessed May 19, 2015
- ↑ iPetitions.com, "Remove Ved Shravah from WCSD BOE," accessed May 20, 2015
- ↑ Poughkeepsie Journal, "Letters to editor, 5/16," May 15, 2015
- ↑ Poughkeepsie Journal, "Wappingers BOE president: no legal action, trustee 'unhappy' with public interaction," May 24, 2014
- ↑ Poughkeepsie Journal, "Dutchess test refusals soar; NY says data will still be used," April 16, 2015
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