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Broward County School Board Race Goes To A Recount

Ryan Petty, left, is now awaiting the results of a vote recount to see if his race with Donna Korn for a seat on the Broward County School Board will go to a runoff election in November. Lori Alhadeff, right, won her race to represent District 4.
Caitie Switalski
/
WLRN
Ryan Petty, left, is now awaiting the results of a vote recount to see if his race with Donna Korn for a seat on the Broward County School Board will go to a runoff election in November. Lori Alhadeff, right, won her race to represent District 4.

The race for an at-large seat in the Broward County School Board is still unsettled after Tuesday’s election.

Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed in the Parkland school shooting in February, challenged imcumbent Donna Korn for seat 8, which is a countywide seat.

Korn took home 50.4 percent of the votes on Tuesday, while Petty took home 31 percent of the votes. But state law dictates that a result less than .5 percent over the majority calls for an automatic recount. The recounting of votes will begin Saturday evening and continue Sunday morning at the supervisor’s offices at the Lauderhill Mall.

If Korn maintains her lead, then she’s automatically a school board member. If for some reason she falls below 50 percent, there will be a runoff in November.

Sun Sentinel reporter Scott Travis, who covered the race, spoke with WLRN Friday about what the recount could mean for the future of the school board and the Broward County Schools superintendent Robert Runcie.

The school board race has been viewed as a barometer of support for Broward Schools' Superintendent Robert Runciein the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting. Some have criticized Runcie's indecisiveness about security features, such as agreeing to metal detectors and then deciding to delay the plans indefinitely.

“Ryan Petty lost his daughter…[he] has been very dissatisfied with the way the school board has handled [the Stoneman Douglas shooting]," Travis said. "There’s a good chance that if he got elected, that he would probably vote to fire Robert Runcie." 

Meanwhile, Korn has supported the superintendent.

A third candidate, Elijah Manley, 19, took home just over 18 percent of the votes, which was not enough to continue on in the race.

Read More: Uncounted Votes: Ballot Woes Still Haunt Broward Supervisor Of Elections Office

A second Parkland parent, Lori Alhadeff, also lost her daughter in the shooting. She won her bid for the District 4 seat on the school board, which encompasses the Northwest portion of the county, including Parkland.

But Travis said Petty's attempt to get county-wide support proved more difficult than mobilizing just the parts of Broward near Parkland.

“The anger is so palpable up there, and there’s a huge demand for change - but it was a lot more difficult to kind of translate that into county-wide anger," he said. "So we saw that Ryan Petty did very well in Parkland, he easily defeated Korn inn those precincts, but countywide he didn’t do that well.”

Copyright 2018 WLRN 91.3 FM

Caitie Switalski is a rising senior at the University of Florida. She's worked for WFSU-FM in Tallahassee as an intern and reporter. When she's in Gainesville for school, Caitie is an anchor and producer for local Morning Edition content at WUFT-FM, as well as a digital editor for the station's website. Her favorite stories are politically driven, about how politicians, laws and policies effect local communities. Once she graduates with a dual degree in Journalism and English,Caitiehopes to make a career continuing to report and produce for NPR stations in the sunshine state. When she's not following what's happening with changing laws, you can catchCaitielounging in local coffee shops, at the beach, or watching Love Actually for the hundredth time.