By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Sea Isle City’s Board of Education has a new member, but it will take a couple of days before another member is declared the official winner of the Nov. 2 election.
Lauren Ciseck, a Sea Isle resident since 2004 and teacher at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, has been appointed by the board to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Lynne Shirk.
Shirk, a veteran member of the school board, formally stepped down during a board meeting Tuesday night and was replaced by Ciseck. Shirk resigned because she is moving from Sea Isle to Marmora, Board of Education President Dan Tumolo said.
Ciseck is a math and social studies teacher at Holy Spirit and has been a faculty member there for 16 years.
Tumolo noted that Ciseck will fill Shirk’s unexpired term. The Cape May County Board of Elections website shows that Shirk’s term expires Dec. 31, 2022.
In an interview Wednesday, Ciseck said she has no major plans as the board’s newest member, but wants to be closely involved in the community.
“It’s more about having an active role in the community and bettering the education for the kids,” she said.
She is married to Sea Isle realtor Ian Ciseck and has a 9-year-old daughter, Lola, and a 7-year-old son, Charlie.
Sea Isle’s school board has five members: Tumolo, Ciseck, Patricia Halfpenny, Kerry Mullane and Kristy Pittaluga.
Halfpenny wanted to run for re-election this year but didn’t submit her nominating petitions in time to be officially placed on the ballot.
Hoping to keep Halfpenny on the board, other members of the school board were part of a community effort to get her enough write-in votes Nov. 2 to win re-election, Tumolo said.
Unofficial results show that Halfpenny received either 39 or 42 write-in votes, which should be enough for her to win re-election, Tumolo said.
Altogether, there were about 62 write-in votes, according to Tumolo. One vote went for Donald Trump, although whoever wrote in the former president’s name for the school board election misspelled it as “Dolald Trump.”
Halfpenny was originally expected to be declared the official winner on Wednesday by the Cape May County Board of Elections. However, the board still must complete the counting of provisional and mail-in ballots for the Nov. 2 election races throughout the county – a process that is expected to be done by Friday.
Cape May County Clerk Rita Rothberg said the unofficial write-in vote totals indicate that Halfpenny will prevail.
“We’ve been working on the write-ins. Certainly, she’s going to be the winner,” Rothberg said in an interview.
The school 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.
