FeedsGabriel wins open school seat
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William GabrielOn Tuesday, voters in the Wayne-Westland Community School District opted to return a familiar face and welcome a new one to the district board of education.
When the polls closed, vote totals showed that voters had elected to keep school board incumbent Cindy Schofield of Wayne on the board for the next four years. In addition, the board will also welcome a new member, William Gabriel of Westland, who beat out challengers Jennifer Finley, Brian Mulligan, and Shawna Walker for the position. Current board member Terrence McClain chose not to seek re-election.
Schofield, who is currently finishing up her second term on the school board, was the top vote getter in both communities with 1,431 votes total. In her hometown of Wayne, she earned more than twice as many votes (421) as her closest competitor.
“I would just like to thank the voters from Wayne and Westland who expressed confidence in me,” she said. “I appreciate the confidence they have shown in me. I look forward to getting to know Mr. Gabriel and continuing my work on the board.”
In the upcoming term, Schofield said that one of the matters on which she intends to focus is improving performance at the secondary education level, including finding innovative ways to help students who are struggling with the new requirements without relaxing improvement efforts at the elementary level.
Gabriel, who earned a total of 982 votes between the two communities, previously served as a member of the board at the William P. Faust Public Library of Westland and has been a member of the Westland Planning Commission for about six months. He could not be reached for comment prior to publication deadline Tuesday evening.
Voters who didn’t head to the polls may have played a major role in deciding the election. Absentee ballots made up a sizable chunk of the ballots cast in Westland, where barely 4 percent of the 68,657 registered voters in the district participated in the election.
In Wayne, more than two-thirds of the votes cast were from absentee voters.
