By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
Three seats with three-year terms will be up for grabs in April’s West Windsor-Plainsboro school board election, and residents interested in serving can pick up candidate kits at the school district’s central office at 505 Village Road West.
One seat for a Plainsboro resident will be up for election, along with two West Windsor seats. The board of education is made up of four Plainsboro residents and five West Windsor residents.
The seat of current member and Plainsboro resident Patricia Bocarsly and the seats of West Windsor residents Richard Kaye and Randall Tucker will be decided in the April 15 election.
The candidate kit provided by the school district includes a nominating petition along with documents provided by the New Jersey School Boards Association about the responsibilities and duties of serving on a school board.
The nominating petitions are due by 4 p.m. on Feb. 25.
”Most people don’t show interest until the beginning of February,” said current President Hemant Marathe.
The school board usually meets twice a month, on the second and fourth Tuesdays, at the Grover Middle School off of New Village Road in West Windsor.
In other district business, the West Windsor-Plainsboro Education Foundation announced the award of eight 2008 grants Monday to district teachers.
The grants — which total $5,000 — will support programs from the elementary to the high school level.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro Education Foundation has funded 240 similar programs in the district, making over $181,000 in grants since its founding in 1995.
Some of the 2008 grants will go to the following programs:
• An English as a second language program that will get ESL students out in the community through service projects run by Suiha Zhao, a Chinese bilingual teacher at Community Middle School and High School South.
• A program to bring better lab equipment to science facilities in High School North, supported by teachers Rich Therkorn, Carolyn Soohoo and Regina Celin.
• A program to purchase books used in writing and reading workshops at Grover Middle School, supported by Stacey Friedman.
• A program to get plastic models of the human eye for students to dissect at the Community Middle School, supported by Denise Weber.
