BENTONVILLE -- Voters chose two more new members for the Bentonville School Board in runoff elections Tuesday.
Complete but unofficial results show Jeremy Farmer defeated Blanca Maldonado in the race for the board's Zone 3 seat.
Farmer^266 (64%)
Maldonado^150 (36%)
For the board's Zone 5 seat, Tatum Aicklen beat Letisha Hinds.
Aicklen^517 (69%)
Hinds^231 (31%)
Five Bentonville School Board seats were up for election this year. A total of 12 people ran for the five seats, with at least two running for each seat.
On Nov. 8, Joel Dunning was elected to the Zone 1 seat, Jennifer Faddis won the Zone 2 seat and Becky Guthrie won the Zone 4 seat.
The elections for Zones 3 and 5 both featured three candidates; runoffs were required because no candidate received more than 50% of the vote in either of those races.
School board positions are nonpartisan and unpaid in Arkansas.
Both Farmer and Aicklen were making their first bids for a political office in this election.
Farmer, 40, is a lifelong Bentonville resident. He's a senior account manager at Launch Marketing Education. He attended, but did not graduate from, Northwest Arkansas Community College.
He has two daughters, one at Bentonville High School and another at Washington Junior High School. He said he believes his experiences as a PTO president, a volunteer in the schools, and past president and board member of Court Appointed Special Advocates of Northwest Arkansas have prepared him to be an effective School Board member.
His Zone 3 covers most of east Bentonville, stretching from Tiger Boulevard at its northernmost point to Southwest Gator Boulevard on the south end. There are 13,059 registered voters in Zone 3, according to the Benton County clerk's office.
The Zone 3 race originally featured three candidates. On Nov. 8, Farmer received the most votes with 1,800, or 38%. Maldonado finished second with 1,572 votes, or 33%. Another candidate, Matthew Smith, had 1,345 votes, or 29%.
Aicklen, 44, has lived for nine years in a part of Rogers that falls in the Bentonville School District. She is a homemaker with a bachelor's degree from the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University.
Aicklen said she ran for the board because her experiences with the district as a parent of four and a longtime school volunteer qualify her to bring a strong parent perspective to board discussions and decisions. The School Board seems like the next step for her, she said.
Zone 5 includes south Bentonville, Cave Springs, Highfill and part of Rogers. There are 15,588 registered voters in the zone, according to the Benton County clerk's office.
In the general election, Aicklen collected 41% of the vote to Hinds' 30%. Yoselin Bolivar finished third, just one vote behind Hinds.
Once the new board is seated, members will draw a term length ranging from one to five years so their terms will be staggered. Board members normally serve five-year terms.
Jeremy Farmer
Tatum Aicklen