A 19-year-old who had his senior year disrupted by COVID-19-related shutdowns defeated an incumbent candidate for school board in New Jersey’s election on Tuesday.
Nicholas Seppy, a 2020 graduate from Egg Harbor Township High School, beat incumbent school board member Terre Alabarda by 17 points. Seppy earned 58.78% support with 4,042 votes while Alabarda earned 41.15% with 2,830 votes, according to the election results from Atlantic County.
Seppy told the Washington Examiner he ran because he saw that “parents were not being listened to” and he “wanted to give them a voice on behalf of their children.” He said his campaign was “run in positivity, not in negativity” or off of some vendetta against his opponent.
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While Seppy himself only had to endure three-quarters of his senior year under COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns, he explained that he didn’t think hybrid learning was the best approach. In a statement to the College Fix he described the COVID-19 shutdowns as “awful.”
“Hybrid education was not yielding the enthusiasm in students they thought it would,” he said. Especially with younger students, they ended up missing “out on an entire year of education.”
Schools in Egg Harbor Township have been operating under a hybrid model, with students split up into two groups with two days a week of in-person learning, since Jan. 19 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the Press of Atlantic City reported. Egg Harbor Township and the Mainland Regional High School District approved plans to allow students to receive four shortened days of in-person learning beginning in March.
As an elected board member, Seppy said he plans to “expand civics education and increase vocational training” for students in the Egg Harbor Township. Seppy said that while he was in school he remembered seeing a “drought” in trades and vocational training, seeing “no new [tradesmen] coming up.”
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One of the biggest upsets as a result of New Jersey’s Tuesday election was 58-year-old truck driver Edward Durr defeating Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney by 2,000 votes. Durr ran his campaign with a $6,000 budget for his campaign.
