By Ryan Smith
and Mary Spicer
MEADVILLE TRIBUNE
Voters in PENNCREST School District chose from among five candidates to fill four open seats on the district’s board of directors during Tuesday’s election.
With 18 of 19 precincts reporting, unofficial results indicate that incumbents Chad Templin and Harold Shorts and newcomers Harry Hicks and Luigi DeFrancesco have each been elected to serve four-year terms on the board. Templin received 2,741 votes; Shorts, 2,549; Hicks, 2,084; De-Francesco, 1,978; and Adam Jardina, 1,689.
The final vote tally begins Friday; absentee and provisional ballots and approximately 350 write-in votes have not been included in the unofficial results.
“I hope to do a good job,” Templin said. I’m glad people respected what I’ve done. I hope to keep doing a good job.”
“I appreciate all the support I got and I hope to continue to think of the children of PENNCREST,” Shorts said. “That’s the main reason I ran for school board again — because I want to do what’s best for students.”
“I’m eager to start the new year on the board to see what kind of improvement I can bring in the process,” DeFrancesco said.
Neither Hicks nor Jardina were available for comment.
Incumbent board members Shorts and Templin were the only names on the May primary ballot, but write-in candidates DeFrancesco, Jardina and Hicks each received more than the required 10 write-in votes to secure spots on Tuesday’s election ballot.
Current board President Cindy Snyder and member Jeff Jackson both opted to not seek re-election after their four-year terms expire this year.
Templin and Shorts are both seeking second terms. Tem-plin, a 39-year-old Woodcock Township resident, has said his top priority if elected is to “help the school board provide the best educational system ... while working within the significant constraints facing our budget over the next several years.”
Shorts, a 65-year-old Town-ville resident, has said his main goal is to “keep taxes in check and keep tax increases to a minimum” while providing students of PENNCREST a “quality education, with the most qualified teachers and support personnel.”
Richmond Township resident DeFrancesco, 63, said he’s running for the position because he wants “to make sure that the interests of the taxpayers of the district are safeguarded and the school children get the best basic education that the means of the district can provide.”
Hicks, 70, also of Townville, said his top priority is “to provide the students with the best possible education at the most cost effective level.”
With the exception of Phila-delphia, each of Pennsylva-nia’s 500 school districts has a nine-member school board with each member elected to serve a four-year term. Four members are elected during one municipal election while the remaining five seats are filled during the municipal election two years later.
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