Some area school board races canceled
Board of Supervisors scraps Somerton, San Luis contests for lack of challengers
SAN LUIS, Ariz. – Elementary school board seats won’t be among the races decided by voters here and in Somerton in the Nov. 6 general election.
Elections for governing board seats in the Gadsden and Somerton elementary school have been canceled because only the incumbents have filed to run.
In the Gadsden district, which covers San Luis and neighboring Gadsden, incumbents Guillermina Fuentes, Luis Marquez and Gloria Torres automatically return to the board for new fouryear terms, since no one else filed to run.
In the Somerton district, one of two seats will actually have to be filled by appointment by Yuma County School Superintendent Tom Tyree, since only one of two incumbents and no challengers filed to run in the general.
Carlos Gonzalez, who also serves on the Somerton City Council, will automatically return to the Somerton school board, while board President Araceli Juarez is stepping down when her term concludes in December.
The Yuma County Board of Supervisors recently canceled the Gadsden and Somerton board elections at the request of both districts.
“I think this is a sign of the community’s confidence in the work that we have been doing, and this gives us the confidence to continue it,” said Marquez, who serves as president of the Gadsden board.
He said the board will press ahead with projects financed through a bond issue approved by voters in 2015, among them construction of a gym at Rio Colorado Elementary School and expansion of the library at San Luis Middle School.
Gonzalez likewise said he believes the lack of turnout of candidates validates what the Somerton board has done.
The board, he says, has on its hands “various challenges and projects, but I believe one of the biggest is the growth of the city. We have to begin to look at the need for more schools and to implement other future projects.”
Tyree said that after the general election, his office will publish a notice inviting letters of interest from any eligible candidates to fill the seat now occupied by Juarez. Candidates must be residents of the Somerton school district, U.S. citizens and eligible voters.