By: Cara Latham
HIGHTSTOWN Ric Perez, whose term on the East Windsor Regional school board expires this year, is not seeking re-election.
As expected, however, incumbents Bonnie Fayer and Bob Laverty did file for candidacy by the state’s deadline on Monday and will be running unopposed for two of the three, three-year East Windsor seats open this year. No other candidates filed to run in the election, which is taking place April 17.
During Monday’s Board of Education meeting, Schools Superintendent Ron Bolandi pointed out that anyone who missed the deadline has the right to mount a write-in campaign.
"If there is no write-in campaign, then the board, after the election and after reorganizing, would then have 60 days to appoint" a new member, he explained.
Mr. Laverty, Ms. Fayer and Mr. Perez were elected in 2001, when they unseated three incumbents. They had no opposition when they sought re-election in 2004. Mr. Perez, an architect, served as the board’s vice president for three years before becoming president in April 2005. He was succeeded as president in 2006 by current President Alice Weisman.
He has not returned several phone calls from the Herald over the last few weeks, and did not attend Monday’s board meeting.
Both Mr. Laverty, a 50-year-old health care data analyst, and Ms. Fayer, a stay-at-home mother, have said they plan to push hard for the passage of the school budget.
The district’s spending measure has been defeated in each of the last two years, and the combined councils of East Windsor and Hightstown followed the latest by slashing a $79.2 million measure by nearly a half-million dollars in 2006.
Ms. Fayer has said she is hoping a glowing state assessment last month of the district’s academic improvement over the last two years will convince voters to back the budget.
Ms. Fayer has two sons in district schools, one a sixth-grader at Melvin H. Kreps Middle School and the other in the third grade at Ethel McKnight Elementary School.

