On Tuesday, Nov. 7, Pennsylvania voters headed to the polls to vote for both statewide and local offices. This includes a vacancy on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as well as school board elections across the state, among many other offices as well. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m.
Among the intense school board elections lies East Penn. Pennsylvania school board elections have consistently been noted recently for their intense politicization, and East Penn is no exception. In a highly contested race, five out of the ten candidates have won seats on the board. Joshua Levinson, Gabrielle Klotz, Shonta Ford, Jeff Jankowski, and Timothy Kelly, all part of a single bipartisan slate, are projected to win, according to the Lehigh County website’s unofficial results, and as projected by several news outlets, including The Morning Call and Lehigh Valley News. Each bipartisan candidate leads on their Republican opponents Angelic Schneider, Paul Barbehenn, Kristofer DePaolo, Matt Mull, and Lawrence Huyssen, by roughly 2,000 votes each. The results, while currently unofficial, will be certified in the coming days. Despite being registered Republicans, Jankowski and Kelly appeared on the ballot as Democrats.
School board members are elected officials who are not compensated for their work, but rather volunteer their time and effort to the community.
“People don’t realize it’s a volunteer position, and it’s a tough position,” former board member from 2013-2021 Ziad Munson said. “If you want to do it right, and do right by the community, you have to invest in learning about the rules and procedures, learn about what the schools are doing, what the goals of the schools are, and so forth. That takes a lot of work in your first couple years.”
Members from both slates did join together with one message: to vote. Some candidates expressed that they felt that municipal elections were overlooked, or that they had a less than desirable voter turnout.
“People tend to wait for larger elections [like] for the president. But the things that are going to affect you the most are the local elections,” Democratic candidate Shonta Ford said. “Those are the elections that often people sit out on.”
Republican candidate Angelic Schnieder expanded on this, saying that the polarization of the election affected voting even further.
“I think voters should vote the person and not the party,” Schnieder said. “Politics does not have a place on the school board. I think they should do their research one on one and meet these candidates.”
These fears were validated, with voter turnout having only 74,933 ballots cast, including mail-in ballots and election day ballots. According to the Lehigh County website, Lehigh County has a total of 241,944 registered voters, meaning only 31 percent of registered voters in the Lehigh Valley participated in the election. Residents of six townships in Lehigh County were able to vote in the EPSB election: Alburtis, Emmaus, Lower Macungie, Macungie, Upper Milford East, and Upper Milford West.
Pennsylvania requires that all new board members undergo five hours of training within a year of their election, and re-elected members must complete three hours of training in the same time frame. The board will reorganize with the newly elected candidates this December, per Pennsylvania law, according to the Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA). All candidates serve a total of four years before running again if they so choose.
This story will be updated as more information emerges.