Three open seats on each of the school boards of Ocean City and Upper Township produced intense competition, with slates of candidates battling each other. In each case the sitting school board president was among the candidates.
In Ocean City, a slate of three headed by incumbent President Kevin Barnes defeated a three-candidate team that had two incumbents and one previous board member. The winners were board President Kevin Barnes and two candidates who will be new to the board, Jennifer Cawley-Black and Jennifer Dwyer.
They defeated conservative parents rights advocates Elizabeth Nicoletti and Catherine Panico, who had paired with previous board member Robin Shaffer.
In Upper Township, two members of the slate of three candidates that included board President Michele Barbieri won. Both Barbieri and incumbent Christine Lentz were reelected, and newcomer Logan Bird, from the opposing slate of three, also won.
In the only other contested school board races, Lower Township Elementary School Board member Lauren Cox lost her bid for reelection, and in the Lower Cape May Regional School Board race, incumbent Roy Abrams Jr. defeated Ralph E. Bakley Jr., who would have been new to the board. The two competed for a one-year unexpired term.
Of the incumbents in those four contested districts who chose to run again, five won and three lost.
Ocean City
In Ocean City the issues of parental rights and local control once again were prominent in the race.
Board President Barnes, who has repeatedly resisted the intrusion of politics into the activities of the school board, countered attempts by conservative board members to alter board and state policies related to controversial health curriculum topics, the Freedom to Read Act and the rights of students to privacy on transgender issues.
The three losing candidates, Panico, Nicoletti and Shaffer, ran together successfully in 2022, when Panico and Nicoletti won full terms and Shaffer gained a one-year unexpired term. A year later Shaffer lost his bid for a full term.
In the 2022 election the threesome had the endorsement of the conservative advocacy group Moms for Liberty, a parents rights advocacy organization best known for challenging the inclusion of LGBTQ+ rights and critical race theory in curriculums. The group also supports other conservative education issues, including concerns about how climate change is depicted.
Although school board elections in Ocean City are nonpartisan, Schaffer was quoted as saying he was a strong supporter of losing gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli. In his third unsuccessful campaign for the governor’s office, Ciattarelli had promised a parents bill of rights, although he provided few details on what such a bill of rights would include.
The Herald reported during the campaign that Shaffer had received a letter of warning in a Maryland school where he served as vice principal related to physical and verbal interactions with a first-grade student. “Unfortunately, this issue has been recently revived by a group with clear political motives,” Shaffer told the Herald in a statement.
In the election night results, Nicoletti came closest to retaining her seat, finishing 99 votes behind Cawley-Black. There were a total of 14,993 votes counted at the end of Election Day. The results include early voting as well as Election Day ballots cast.
All Election Day results are unofficial at this point and do not count provisional ballots, mail-in ballots that may have been postmarked in time but have not yet been received, and mail-in ballots for which “cure letters” have been issued. The number of such ballots is historically not large, and they usually have the potential to make a difference only in extremely close races.
Upper Township
Two incumbent board members and a third candidate who previously served on the board teamed up to run against three newcomers seeking three seats on the township’s nine-member board. The two slates contended in an election in which the costs associated with sending the school district’s high school students to Ocean City High School were a major issue. The Upper Township School District is a pre-K to grade 8 system without its own high school.
Board President Barbieri and incumbent Lentz won reelection, but their teammate, Brian Teeney, lost his bid for a seat. Bird, from the opposing slate, edged Teeney by 30 votes for the third board post. Bird received 2,735 votes compared to Teeney’s 2,705.
Bird had been vocal about the cost issues involved in the relationship with Ocean City, where Upper Township students are a majority of those enrolled in Ocean City High School.
Throughout the campaign residents of the township noted in social media comments that Upper Township has the highest school tax rate in the county. According to the county tax board, the school tax rate in Upper is $1.587, which is a full 71% of the total property tax rate for the township, including county and local municipal taxes.
For two years running a major factor in increases in the school budget has been the rising cost of sending Upper students to Ocean City. The tuition cost per student rose by $1,000 per year in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. In total, $12 million of the $41 million Upper Township district’s 2025-26 budget goes as tuition to Ocean City. Barbieri said during the campaign that discussions are already underway to address the Ocean City costs.
Since 2018, when a new formula for state aid began to be phased in, Upper Township has lost more than half of the aid it once received. State aid to the township stood at $10 million in school year 2017-2018 but now sits at a hair over $4 million in 2025-2026.
Barbieri has said the kind of funding the township once received from the state will not return. During the campaign, Bird pointed to the tax increases imposed by the school board as evidence that a new approach is needed on the board.
A third incumbent whose term ends this year, Kristie Brown Chisholm, did not seek reelection. Chisholm was one of three non-voting representatives from Upper Township on the Ocean City School Board.
Lower Township Elementary
In the pre-K to grade 6 school district incumbent Lauren Cox, who self-describes as a “conservative Christian mother,” lost her bid for reelection by 145 votes to newcomer Ember Loefflad. Incumbent Jonathan Vile, whose term ends this year, did not seek reelection.
Newcomer Lindsay Selby also won a seat, and incumbent Lauren Randle was reelected with the highest vote total of the race, 4,982 votes compared to Selby’s 4,136 and Loefflad’s 3,765. Cox ended up with 3.620.
Lower Cape May Regional
Lower Cape May Regional is the only regional school district in the county, drawing student from Lower Township, Cape May and West Cape May, with all of those municipalities paying a regional school tax based on property values. Cape May Point also send its students to LCMR on a tuition-based model. LCMR is a grades 7 to 12 district.
With three full-term seats open, all three incumbents won reelection unopposed. The seat that was contested had a one-year unexpired term. Two candidates vied for that seat, with incumbent Roy Abrams Jr. winning 3,391 votes to newcomer Ralph E. Bakley Jr.’s 2,868.
The three incumbents who won reelection are Gary Douglas, Frank Onorato and Anne Maretta “Retta” Matagiese.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com,
