Want To Run For The Brick School Board?

Criticisms of the Brick Township Board of Education have been many over the course of the last 10 weeks.

The arrest of Superintendent Walter Uszenski on fraud charges and the announcement of a plan to cut a number of full-time bus driver positions has brought the public out in force at meetings of the Board of Education in the weeks since, with many people calling for radical changes to the board.

Three seats -- held currently by Michael Conti, Frank Pannucci Jr. and Susan Suter -- are up for election on the school board portion of the November ballot. Additionally, voters will be electing someone to fill the one-year unexpired term of John Talty, who resigned his seat in April while he was recovering from a heart bypass. Conti and Pannucci are running for seats on the Township Council.

Someone will be chosen by Interim Executive Ocean County Superintendent Todd C. Flora to fill Talty’s seat for the remainder of 2015 in the coming days as the deadline to apply for appointment to his seat is 4 p.m. Thursday.

For those who want to run for any of the four seats on the board, there is a deadline of 4 p.m. Monday, July 27, to file their nominating petition to run for any of the four seats, Ocean County Clerk Scott Colabella has said.

Nominating petitions can be picked up in person at the Ocean County Clerk’s Main Office, at the Ocean County Courthouse, Election Services, Room 107 at 118 Washington St., Toms River. The office is staffed from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

A complete listing of all candidates who file petitions for school board will be available shortly after the July 27 deadline at www.oceancountyclerk.com or www.facebook.com/oceancountyclerk.

School board candidates seeking additional information on the petition filing process can contact the Ocean County Clerk’s Election Office at (732) 929-2153. “It’s important for candidates to get their paperwork in on time,” Colabella said. “That is what guarantees their place on the ballot.”

(Michael Conti, left, and Frank Pannucci Jr. are two of the three Brick school board members whose seats are up for election in November. The third full term on the board up for election is the seat held by Susan Suter. Credit: Karen Wall)