By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Donald Trump won’t be joining the Sea Isle City Board of Education, even though he received one write-in vote in the Nov. 2 election.
A write-in campaign to keep incumbent Patricia Halfpenny on the Sea Isle school board appears to have worked, according to preliminary vote totals released Monday.
Halfpenny wanted to run for re-election but didn’t submit her nominating petitions in time to be officially placed on the ballot, Board of Education President Dan Tumolo said.
Hoping to keep Halfpenny on the board, other members of the school board were part of a community campaign to get her enough write-in votes Nov. 2 to win re-election, Tumolo explained.
“We made an effort to get her in,” he said in an interview Monday.
Tumolo said Halfpenny received 42 of the 62 write-in votes that have been compiled so far. One vote was written in for former President Trump, but whoever supported him for a seat on the school board misspelled his name “Dolald Trump,” the results show.
All of the school board votes – including mail-in and provisional ballots – are not expected to be counted until Wednesday, Cape May County Clerk Rita Rothberg said.
Rothberg noted that it will probably not be until Wednesday that Halfpenny can be officially declared the winner.
“It looks like Patricia is the winner. I spoke to her and she would like to accept,” Rothberg said. “I expect that she’ll be the winner.”
Tumolo said that a similar write-in campaign was undertaken a few years ago to keep then-school board member Jack Birkmeyer on the board when Birkmeyer didn’t submit his nominating petitions in time to have his name placed on the ballot.
Although Birkmeyer won, some Disney cartoon characters received write-in votes during the election, too.
“The last time we did it, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck got votes. But they didn’t get enough. Jack Birkmeyer still won,” Tumolo recalled, laughing.
Sea Isle’s Board of Education consists of five members: Tumolo, Halfpenny, Lynne Shirk, Kerry Mullane and Kristy Pittaluga.
Shirk is scheduled to step down from the board during Tuesday night’s meeting because she is moving from Sea Isle to Marmora.
Tumolo said the board has a candidate in mind to replace Shirk and is expected to make the appointment at Tuesday’s meeting.
He declined to divulge the candidate’s name in advance of the meeting, but said she is a teacher at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon and has “excellent qualifications.”
The board will hold its annual reorganization meeting on Jan. 5 to select its leaders. Tumolo, who has been president since 2007, said he intends to seek that position again when the board reorganizes.
Among other duties, the board is responsible for putting together the school budget each year. Sea Isle’s local school tax rate has remained stable for 10 years in a row under the budget.
Tuition costs and transportation expenses for students to attend other school districts represent the bulk of the spending in the nearly $2.5 million budget. Sea Isle closed its public school in 2012 due to declining student enrollment, but it still must pay the expense of sending its students to Ocean City and other school districts for their education.
