UPPER TOWNSHIP — Seven candidates are seeking three seats on the nine-member Upper Township Board of Education in the election Nov. 8.
The Upper Township School District operates a primary, elementary and middle school and represents students’ interests on the Ocean City Board of Education as a sending district.
Incumbents Michele Barbieri, Kristie Chisholm and William Sooy are facing a challenge from Kiernan Black, Alexander Grassi, Daniel P. Kilgallon and Christine Lentz.
Barbieri, the longtime board president, first was elected in 2004 and now is in her 18th year of serving on the board.
A township resident for 33 years, she and her husband, Tom, have two daughters, both educators, and are anticipating their first grandchild in December. Barbieri has worked for the past 35 years as the surgical assistant and now business manager for a podiatric surgeon in Atlantic County.
Barbieri also serves as vice president of the Cape May County School Boards Association and is a member of the New Jersey School Boards Association’s Delegate Assembly, Legislative Committee and Leadership Committee.
She has achieved certified board member status, as well as master board member and is currently finishing up work to achieve certified board leader status.
Chisholm, a township resident since 1984, has served on the board since January 2014, winning re-election twice.
A teacher with degrees in biology and education for 26 years, she and her husband, Joel, have two teenage daughters.
Chisholm, 50, holds certification in K-8 education with highly qualified status in science, English language arts, history and mathematics, as well as high school biology and general science.
Sooy, who has lived in the township for about a dozen years, is a former police officer in Millville who retired as head of the Atlantic County Prosecutor Office Gangs, Guns and Narcotics Task Force.
He currently works full time for a federally funded agency — the Middle Atlantic Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network — that provides equipment, funding and training to police departments in its region. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Sooy, 63, was appointed to an unexpired term on the board in March 2016 and won re-election later that year and again in 2019.
He has six children ranging in age from 32 — a pediatric oncologist at Duke — to 10, and three grandchildren. Four of his children attended township schools.
Black, 46, and her husband, Jeremy, live in Beesleys Point with their two daughters, both students at Upper Township Elementary School.
She grew up in Chatham but her husband is an alumni of Upper Township schools and Ocean City High School.
They spent the earlier part of their careers based out of Philadelphia and made the move to Upper Township three years ago.
Black is a graduate of Rutgers University and works as educational director of a Montessori school in Philadelphia that opened its doors for the first time in September 2020. She has worked as an educator in Montessori schools in Boston, New York City.
Black first ran for a seat in 2021, placing fifth out of five candidates seeking three seats.
Grassi is a 36-year-old husband and father of three who has spent his life dedicated to public service. Grassi, who has bachelor’s degrees in political science and education as well as a master’s degree in educational leadership, is in his 11th year as a high school teacher and coach. He also has spent 21 years on the Brigantine Beach Patrol,
He said he looks forward to ensuring financial accountability and educational excellence.
Kilgallon, 44, and his wife have two children in the school district. He has more than 20 years of experience working with at-risk youth and students from underserved communities. He has a master’s degree in special education with more than 10 years of classroom teaching experience. He is a board-certified behavior analyst and independent contractor working in public schools and the communities they serve, specializing in teacher training, positive behavior support and intervention, early intensive behavioral intervention and autism support.
Kilgallon said he spends most of his free time coaching youth sports and walking the family dog.
Lentz, 60, an educator for nearly four decades, has lived in the same home in Upper Township for 32 years.
Over a 38-year career, she has taught middle school science in Delaware and high school science, biology, chemistry and physical science in Ocean City.
Lentz served as head girls basketball coach and assistant softball coach, and later as an assistant principal and athletic director for Ocean City High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Moravian University in biology, a master’s degree in educational leadership from St. Joseph’s University and a doctorate in innovation and leadership from Wilmington University. She now is an adjunct professor of biology at Stockton University and chemistry at Atlantic Cape Community College.
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff