CUMBERLAND — The Allegany County Board of Commissioners by a 2-1 vote contradicted recent election numbers to appoint the next local school board member.
Board President David Caporale and Creade Brodie chose Linda Widmyer to fill a seat on the five-member Allegany County Board of Education.
Commissioner William Atkinson voted against the appointment.
“We had 11 very good applicants,” Caporale said Thursday.
The vacancy resulted from the death of the school board’s president, Bob Farrell, on Dec. 3.
Until 2020, the governor appointed individuals to fill school board vacancies.
A subsequent legislative amendment transferred that power to county commissioners.
Farrell’s term started in 2023, and the next election for his seat will happen in 2026.
According to 2022 election results for Allegany County, Widmyer received 7,837 votes and came in fourth place.
Widmyer did not run in the 2024 BOE election, which featured four candidates for two open seats.
Incumbent Tammy Fraley — who spent eight years on the BOE and is a past president of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education — took third place in that race, less than three months ago, with 12,227 votes.
Earlier this month in a letter to the Cumberland Times-News, Allegany County Education Association President Kimberly Sloane said Fraley would have provided the BOE “a seamless transition with the least disruption to the ongoing business … since she has the experience and knowledge required for this position on day one.”
While the county commissioners decided to field applicants for the vacancy, “the voters of Allegany County already made the choice clear in November,” Sloane said.