No races in April 18 election
By Ruth Luse
On April 18, there will be no contested school board races in Hopewell Valley.
Four Valley residents three from Hopewell Township and one from Pennington Borough are running for four open seats on the nine-member Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education.
Two candidates are running for two three-year terms: incumbent Linda Mitchell of Pine Tavern Court and newcomer Jeffrey Bartolino of George Washington Drive. Mr. Bartolino is going for the seat being vacated by William Guthrie, who did not seek re-election.
The candidate for Hopewell Township’s open one-year unexpired term is incumbent Werner Graf of Reservoir Road. He was appointed to the board in October to take the place of Michael Bruno, who resigned Aug. 31. If elected April 18, he would serve the last year of Mr. Bruno’s term, which ends in April 2007.
Seeking re-election to Pennington Borough’s one seat is incumbent Kevin Doran of Fitzcharles Drive.
The candidates are:
JEFFREY BARTOLINO was born and raised in Princeton and has been a lifelong Mercer County resident. He and his wife, Donna, have raised their three children in Hopewell Township for the past 11 years. The eldest child graduated from the high school in June. The two younger ones are in the 11th and eighth grades in the school district.
Mr. Bartolino is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Rutgers Law School. He worked as a deputy attorney general in Trenton for seven years before joining New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Company in 1991. He is an assistant vice president in the general claims-legal department where his duties include overseeing litigation and teaching insurance courses to NJM employees.
Mr. Bartolino has been a volunteer coach of youth sports for 15 years and is the parent advisor for the Hopewell YMCA’s Teen Leaders Club. He is the president of the Board of Directors of the Union Industrial Home for Children, a social agency in Trenton, and also serves as a board member for the Mercer County Bar Foundation, the New Jersey Defense Association and the National Arbitration Forum of New Jersey.
LINDA MITCHELL graduated from the University of Delaware with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and an associate degree in psychology.
Following graduation, she was chosen for Macy’s executive management training program in New York City. She then became a department manager and later an assistant buyer. Some of her duties included staffing, inventory and sales reporting, purchasing and financial planning.
Ms. Mitchell returned to the field of education and taught at the elementary level for eight years in New Jersey and Virginia. She served on various committees, such as Teacher In-Service Programs, Visiting Performing Arts Curriculum and Language Arts Curriculum Evaluation.
While staying home with her young children, Ms. Mitchell ran her own educational toys and books business, with management responsibility for over 90 people. In 1998, she and her husband Bill, moved their family from Connecticut to Hopewell Township.
In Hopewell Valley, she has participated in a variety of school activities (i.e., PTO fundraisers/auctions, multiple years as a room parent), and outreach activities at St. Matthew’s Church (i.e., chaired Fall Service Auction for three years, president of Parish Life Guild).
Since her election to the school board in April 2003, Ms. Mitchell has served on the board’s Personnel Committee, Facility Committee, Safety Insurance Committee, Policy Committee and Communications Committee. She has been the chairwoman of the Curriculum and Instruction Committee since 2004, and also served as the board liaison to Bear Tavern Elementary School and Central High School. Ms. Mitchell is completing her first year as vice president of the Board.
She and her husband have three children a son in his freshman year at Ithaca College, a freshman daughter at the high school and another son, who is in fifth grade at Bear Tavern.
WERNER GRAF has lived in the township for three years and is a global client executive with IBM Corp. of Mount Laurel.
Mr. Graf is assigned to IBM clients Campbell Soup and The Hershey Co. and coordinates the corporation’s international team. He also has worked in marketing at the Chicago office of Ernst & Young and as a division director at Proctor & Gamble Co. in Cincinnati.
His previous experience on volunteer community boards includes service as a director and treasurer of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Chicago and the River Plaza Homeowners Association, representing some 3,000 residents in a 52-story building.
An Indiana native, Mr. Graf is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and holds an abridged master’s degree in business administration through the Harvard/IBM Certification Program.
He and his wife, Lisa, have a toddler daughter, Angelina.
KEVIN DORAN has worked for more than 25 years in the human resources field. He serves as vice president for human resources for PQ Corporation. Before joining the Valley Forge, Pa.-based corporation last year, Mr. Doran had spent 24 years with Philips Electronics N.A., the North American operating division of Philips’ global lighting business, last serving as senior vice president for human resources.
In 2003 he was appointed to take the Pennington Borough school board seat vacated by Ari Gabinet, who resigned. Since then, Mr. Doran has chaired the Personnel Committee, the Finance Committee and the ad-hoc Superintendent Search Committee. He also serves on the board’s Policy Committee. For the past two years he has been the board’s liaison to Toll Gate Grammar School.
Mr. Doran holds a bachelor’s degree from Rider University, where he double-majored in management and organizational behavior and industrial relations. He completed an executive management program at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. He serves as chairman of the Business Advisory Board at Rider’s College of Business.
Mr. Doran and his family have lived in the district for the past 11 years, moving to Pennington from Hopewell Township four years ago. He and his wife, Donna, have two children. Their daughter, Kristen, is a 2004 graduate of Central High School. Son Eric currently attends CHS.

