Nine residents of Manalapan have applied for an appointment to fill a vacant seat on the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education.
Veronica Wolf, the school district’s business administrator/board secretary, said on March 3 that the residents seeking the appointment are Michael Levenson, Claudio Alvarez, Jamie Herr, Stacey Einziger, Kelly Lukas, Ryan Green, Max Berent, Jim Gibbons and Christy Minetello.
Green is a former member of the school board, and Einziger and Minetello were candidates for seats on the board in November.
Wolf said interviews with the candidates will be conducted by the board in executive (closed) session on March 15. The board may appoint an individual to the open seat that evening, but that is not certain, she said.
John D’Amato of Manalapan, who won election to a three-year term on the board in November 2020 and joined the panel in January 2021, resigned from the board on Feb. 2. D’Amato’s term was scheduled to conclude in December 2023.
District administrators announced that a vacancy on the board existed and solicited candidates to fill the open seat. Applications were required to be filed by March 2.
Because D’Amato was one of Manalapan’s eight representatives on the board, only residents of Manalapan were eligible to seek the appointment. Englishtown has one resident who serves on the nine-member board.
The individual who is selected to succeed D’Amato will be appointed to a term that will run through Dec. 31, 2022.
The eight current members of the school board are Manalapan residents Brian Graime, Gerald Bruno, Christine Parisi, David Kane, Ryan Urgo, Dotty Porcaro and David Ferber; and Englishtown resident Jesse Tossetti.
School board members in New Jersey serve without compensation.
