Some Phila.-area school board challengers elected

By Dan Hardy

Inquirer Staff Writer

In school board elections Tuesday in the Pennsylvania suburbs, some candidates critical of recent board stances on issues ranging from school renovations to superintendent salaries and district budgets won seats.

All newly elected members assume office on Dec. 7. Many board seats were uncontested. Candidates were allowed to run on both Democratic and Republican ballots in the May primary, and if they won both votes then, they ran unopposed this fall.

In the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, in Chester and Delaware Counties, Keith Knauss and Jeff Hellrung, former board members who ran again after they butted heads with the school board over renovation plans for the high school, were unofficial winners.

Knauss, an engineering consultant, and Hellrung, a high school math teacher, started a citizens' group in 2007 to oppose a $62.7 million renovation and expansion plan for Unionville High School. They led a campaign that defeated the proposal twice in referendums. Then, this year, the board approved a similar $65.1 million project that did not require a referendum.

"What the electorate is saying is that they don't want to reelect people who have gone against their wishes," Knauss said yesterday. "They want a board that is more responsive to their needs and wants."

Knauss said the district must find a way to finance needed renovations to other schools even with a big debt load for the high school project.

In Chester County's Great Valley School District, Bruce Chambers, a retired Postal Service inspector and corporate executive, is an unofficial winner. Chambers said he started attending meetings in 2007 because he saw "taxes increasing by a great deal, with only modest academic results."

Chambers sparred with the board over its 2007 contract with Superintendent Rita Jones, which he said was too generous; the purchase of two properties for future expansion; and a teachers' contract, ratified this spring, which he said gave educators too much.

He said one priority would be to "define meaningful and definitive" academic goals for the district. Also, he said, "tax revenues are falling; we don't have anything in place to address that right now."

In Bucks County's Pennsbury School District, Simon Campbell, founder of Stop Teacher Strikes, a group that wants to make teacher strikes illegal in the state, was unofficially elected. He and running mate Kathleen Zawacki, another unofficial winner, pledged to "cut wasteful spending" from the district's budget.

In another closely watched election, in Chester County's Owen J. Roberts School District, John Dutton, the last of a five-member board majority that voted in June to fire Superintendent Myra Forrest, apparently lost his seat.

The dismissal sparked anger among residents that was heightened because the four other board members who voted Forrest out had already lost in the May primary.

The current board, in office until Dec. 7, has scheduled a public meeting Wednesday to interview the three finalists to replace Forrest. Its next scheduled meeting is Nov. 23.

In Chester County's Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, two Democrats - Kevin Buraks and Anne Crowley - were among the winners Tuesday, boosting their party's representation on the nine-member board from one to three. Crowley, an environmental and energy consultant, said, however, that party affiliation "should not be the lens through which school district affairs get sorted out." She will work to keep taxes in check while maintaining the district's high academic standing, she said.

Voters in Montgomery County's Perkiomen Valley School District approved a referendum question Tuesday to scrap an occupational assessment tax, which sets amounts according to a list of job classifications rather than by income. It was replaced by a 0.4 percent earned-income-tax increase. Only two Philadelphia-area districts - Phoenixville and Council Rock - continue to use the colonial-era tax.

Contact staff writer Dan Hardy at 610-313-8134 or dhardy@phillynews.com.

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