We are less than a month away from Indiana County’s Primary Election, and one of the hotly-contested races in the primary is set.
The Indiana School Board race will be a closely-watched one as there are many who are running who are against the proposed elementary school projects in the district that would close Eisenhower and Horace Mann Elementary Schools, tear down and build a new 900-student Ben Franklin Elementary School and expand East Pike elementary school. The topic has been divisive as many of the district citizens have expressed that they are against the project due to the high costs, the closure of the two schools in Indiana Borough that are among the top performers in the district, and incurring further debt for the project before paying off the district’s current debt.
All seven of the candidates who have registered have cross-filed on both the Democratic and Republican Ballots. Kenneth Ault of Armstrong Township, Ute Lowery of White Township, Barbara Barker of Indiana Borough have not served on the school board before, and are all running on an anti-project platform. Tom Harley is running for a seat on the board after he was defeated in a 2015 re-election bid. Harley is also anti-project.
Current board members Julia Trimarchi Cuccaro and Dr. John Uccellini are running for re-election. Their votes as board members show that Cuccaro has been anti-project, while Uccellini supports the project.
The seventh candidate, former Indiana Borough Councilman, welder and staffer at the ICTC Jeffrey Geesey has not taken a stance on the elementary project issue.
