Three more file for school board seats

December 01, 2007|By ANDREW SCHOTZ

WASHINGTON COUNTY - Three more people filed to run for the Washington County Board of Education on Friday, making it a five-way race for four seats so far.

Two of the newly declared candidates are Wayne D. Ridenour, the board's vice president, and W. Edward Forrest, who served on the board for about seven years until resigning in March.

Margaret Ann Lowery also filed on Friday.

The deadline to file is 9 p.m. Monday

Three other incumbents - Donna Brightman, Bernadette M. Wagner and Roxanne R. Ober, the board's president - had not filed to run for re-election as of Friday.

Meredith Fouche of Sharpsburg and former board member Russell F. Williams II of Hagerstown filed previously.

If there are at least nine candidates for the four seats, there will be a primary on Feb. 12, 2008.

Otherwise, all of the candidates will move ahead to the Nov. 4, 2008, general election.

Forrest, 44, of Old Forge Road near Hagerstown, was elected to his first four-year term in 2000, then re-elected in 2004.

With a year left on his second term, he resigned to take a job promotion.

Forrest was working as a pharmacist at Martin's Food Market on Dual Highway.

His new job had him overseeing 38 pharmacy departments in a 150-mile radius for Giant-Carlisle, the parent company of Martin's. He said when he resigned in March that he expected the travel and demands of the new job to keep him from serving on the school board.

Forrest said Friday that he decided a few months ago that he missed the community involvement he had given up.

He has returned to the area in a "floating" position, filling in at various local stores, until a more permanent job opens.

Ridenour, 56, of Tammany Manor Road, near Williamsport, said he was "pretty sure for some time" that he was going to run again.

A retired school teacher, Ridenour now is a certified residential real estate appraiser.

Lowery, 60, of Hickory School Road in Halfway, said she is retired after 16 years of working for the state in different youth-related jobs.

Her most recent job was teaching for a year at Catoctin Summit Adolescent Program, a school for students with substance abuse problems.

Lowery said she is interested in several education issues, such as school capacity, special needs programs and magnet schools.

Williams, 64, is a retired school teacher. He served on the school board from 2002 to 2006, when he lost in a primary.

Fouche, 56, works for Federal Express Smart Post in Martinsburg, W.Va. He ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 1988 and 1992.

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