By Pete Chiodo
MEADVILLE TRIBUNE
With all four precincts reporting, unofficial results of Tuesday’s election indicate that Donald Ellis Jr. will represent the Conneaut Lake attendance area on the Conneaut School Board for the next four years.
Ellis won by an unofficial tally of 712 to 320 over opponent Alan Dupper Heil.
“I’m excited to get going,” said Ellis. “I’m excited to get to work on the board and to see what kind of accomplishments I can assist with.”
As for Heil, he said, “Hope-fully, we can all move forward and look to 21st century ideas of education and not to the past.”
Both candidates agreed that the cost of maintaining a separate elementary school and a high school in each of the district’s three attendance areas makes money a serious issue for the district, and that a careful look must be taken at exactly how taxpayer dollars are — and should be — spent.
As a teacher, Heil was also concerned about a different set of numbers; the district’s Penn-sylvania System of School Achievement scores. He noted that the district is meeting the PSSA benchmarks — but just barely. Heil also expressed concern about what he described as an excessive number of Conneaut graduates who have to take remedial courses once they move on to the state’s institutions of higher education.
Ellis said that as a school board member he will take a look at his opponent’s issues. “That’s one thing that I will promise (Heil) is the PSSA scores that he had a concerns about, I’ll at least take a look at his concerns, see where we’re at and see if we can increase the (scores). I will not just overlook that.”
While residents of most area school districts are represented by school boards elected at-large, with all the district’s voters selecting among the same candidates, Conneaut’s members are chosen by region, with each of the district’s three attendance areas represented by three of the nine board members.
Two years from now, in 2011, voters will decide the occupants of the remaining five seats.
This time around, with a total of four four-year seats up for election, incumbent David Schaef was unopposed for the single seat available in Region 1, the Linesville attendance area; while incumbents Carol Bocan and Gina Mattera McCauley ran unopposed for two seats in Region 2, the Conneautville attendance area.
Only Region 3, the Conneaut Lake attendance area, was contested, with Democratic nominee Heil and Republican nominee Ellis vying for the seat now held by Lora Zill. With the incumbent opting to not seek re-election, a new face on the board was guaranteed regardless of the outcome of the election.
In a separate race, incumbent Cheryl Krachkowski, who was appointed to replace Region 1 representative Lee Livingston following his resignation last spring, ran unopposed to fill the two-year balance of Livingston’s term.
Pete Chiodo can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at pchiodo@meadvilletribune.com.
