{"id":16757,"date":"2020-07-27T18:30:17","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T22:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=16757"},"modified":"2020-07-28T09:53:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:53:13","slug":"newcomers-join-longtime-brick-democrat-incumbent-in-2020-school-board-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2020\/07\/newcomers-join-longtime-brick-democrat-incumbent-in-2020-school-board-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Newcomers Join Longtime Brick Democrat, Incumbent in 2020 School Board Election"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brick<\/a>

Brick Township Board of Education\/Schools (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Five candidates will compete for two open seats on the Brick Township Board of Education this November, with one incumbent declining to seek a second term and another running a solo campaign. Candidates had until the end of business Monday to file petitions to run.<\/p>\n

Incumbent Jessica Clayton, a Green Party member who ran with a slate of Democrats three years ago, will seek re-election without any running mates under the banner of \u201cFighting for Funding.\u201d Maria Foster, a labor union organizer who was her former running mate, is not seeking re-election. While technically nonpartisan, political parties often provide tacit support to candidates and sponsor slates under independent names. That does not appear to be the case this year in Brick.<\/p>\n

A longtime Brick Democratic party luminary, Michael Blandina, who currently serves as a commissioner on the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority, has thrown his hat into the race, also running solo. He is running under the \u201cBrick First\u201d banner.<\/p>\n

Another solo candidate, Melissa Lozada, is running under the \u201cTime for Change banner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only ticket of candidates seeking office is Micah Bender and Melissa \u201cMissy\u201d Parker. Bender is a frequent attendee at school board meetings, and works professionally as an official with the state Department of Education. Parker, a parent of four children in the Brick school system, is a stay-at-home mom, according to a press release announcing her campaign, and serves as vice president of her school PTA, a member the NJPTA and the national PTA. She is also a rotating preschool teacher at Wall Methodist Childcare.<\/p>\n

Bender and Parker are running under the \u201cTransparency and Community\u201d banner.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five candidates will compete for two open seats on the Brick Township Board of Education this November, with one incumbent declining to seek a second term and another running a solo campaign. Candidates had until the end of business Monday to file petitions to run. Incumbent Jessica Clayton, a Green Party member who ran with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,13],"tags":[41,24,4136,2323],"class_list":["post-16757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-elections","category-brick-schools","tag-board-of-education","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-election-2020","tag-school-board"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSC_0004.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-4mh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}