Lots of names and lots of offices up for local election in 2025 and taking a look at just two school districts in southern Chester County you can see why an informed voter needs to do a little homework. The Avon Grove School District has four open seats on their nine-member board while Oxford has five seats due to the filling of an unexpired term. Each district has a slightly different electoral map due to the fact that Oxford has three at-large seats meaning that three candidates don’t run in a specific geographical area, they run throughout the entire district.
Looking at the Oxford district you have two candidates for the one open at-large seat and that’s incumbent Andrew Atkinson and Yama Fernandez running for the one seat. The other six board seats are parceled out as two seats each for three specific areas. Region 1 is Upper Oxford Township, Lower Oxford Township West and Oxford Borough East. Two candidates are running for one seat, Andrew Peters and current member Jennifer Kehs.
Region 2 covers Oxford Borough West, Lower Oxford Township West, and West Nottingham Township. There are two seats open in this region and Mary Higgins and John Deecki are running for a four year term. The other unexpired term features two candidates, Sean Grugan and past school board member Chauncey Boyd. Lastly, Region 3 is the area of Elk Township and East Nottingham and this locale has three candidates: David Trimble, incumbent Michael Blessington and Yami Fernandez. Fernandez is running for two different seats; if she is successful she will have to decide which seat she is running for in November’s general election.
The Avon Grove district has no at-large seats and they have three regions. Region 1 is Franklin and London Britain Townships and there are three candidates running for two seats: Natalie Ortega-Moran and current board members Ruchira Singh and Mike Woodin. Region 2 encompasses New London, Penn and the southwest corner of West Grove Borough. There is one seat open in this locality and there are two candidates, former school board member Katie Leonard and Stephen Shepplemen.
The third Avon Grove region is London Grove Township, Avondale Borough and the remainder of West Grove. Current members Bill Wood and Jules Quartapella are vying for one seat. A feature that makes school board races slightly different is that in the hopes of keeping partisanship out of the race candidates can run on both the Republican and Democratic ballots thus cross-filing. Voters may also find that candidates who did not file petitions to get on the May 20th ballot can attempt a write-in if they can persuade voters to write their names in on primary Election Day.
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