Candidate Profiles: Voters to Elect Four for School Board on Nov. 5

Ocean City voters will go to the polls in the general election on Nov. 5 to fill four seats on the 12-member Ocean City Board of Education.

Only two candidates are on the ballot for the three open seats (for full three-year terms). But seven candidates will compete to finish out the unexpired term of board member Greg Donahue.

• Jon D. Batastini (also running as a write-in candidate for a full term)
• Dale F. Braun Jr. (also running as a write-in candidate for a full term)
• Holly A. Buck
• Michael D. Foster
• Daniel J. McGinley
• David E. Powell
• Michaela Walsh

• Peter V. Madden
• Raymond M. Clark

The three-year terms of Clark, current board President Brenda Moiso and board member Lloyd Hayes are expiring. Moiso and Hayes will not seek re-election on the ballot.

Clark, an Ocean City firefighter and father of two daughters in the district, was the top vote-getter among four candidates in the 2010 election.

Madden, a broker manager with Prudential Fox & Roach and father of four, served one term on the board and was president 2010 to 2011. But he was defeated in the November 2012 election that re-elected James Bauer and Tom Oves and brought Jacqueline McAlister to the board.

The third seat will be filled by a write-in candidate for the Nov. 5 election, and if there is none, the county superintendent will make an appointment. Jon D. Batastini is running as a write-in candidate for the third seat.

Ocean City's Board of Education includes nine elected members from Ocean City and three appointed from the Upper Township sending district.

Donahue, 65, was re-elected to his second three-year term in April 2011. The retired principal of Ocean City Primary School worked more than 35 years as an educator in the school system.

He resigned when his daughter was hired as a school teacher in the district (to avoid a potential conflict of interest) and because he is currently working as an interim principal at Brigantine Intermediate School.