Dickinson Scores BOE Seat, Tarken Ousted

Challenger J. Barry Dickinson has ousted Wayne Tarken from the Cherry Hill school board in voting that doubled that of last year’s school board election, according to unofficial election results Tuesday night.

Dickinson was third overall behind incumbents Kathryn Judge and Colleen Horiates, who won re-election, with 10,373 votes, beating Tarken by just over 3,000 votes.

If there was any doubt a move to November would increase the numbers for school board elections, Dickinson’s win erased that—despite being just the third-highest vote-getter, he received three times the number of votes as several of the winners last year, and 10 times the number of votes he garnered in 2011.

Official turnout numbers weren’t immediately available Tuesday night, but with under votes, it appears just over 32,000 voters cast a ballot in Cherry Hill in the election. Only about half of that voted in the school board race, which was sectioned off in its own portion of the ballot, away from the partisan races.

Just 6,820 voted in the school board election in 2011.

Voters in general said it was a good move to put the school board elections on the November ballot.

At Cherry Hill West, Anthony Ciccotelli said he never went out of his way to vote in school board elections previously, but the convenience of having that race included in the general election led him to cast a ballot.

“If it’s there, I’ll vote on it,” he said. “It’s probably a good thing…especially in this community, to get people to vote on something school-related.”