BATH — A seat on the Regional School Unit 1 Board of Directors that failed to attract any candidates in the November election is finally being filled.

RSU 1 Superintendent William Shuttleworth said Monday that Alan Walton of Bath will fill the vacancy in District 6, an Arrowsic-Bath seat that had been occupied by Frances Tolan.

Walton, 75, worked at Bath Junior High School – now Bath Middle School – from 1960 to 1983, starting as a teacher and eventually becoming assistant principal. Walton’s wife, Betsy, was a teacher at the Fisher-Mitchell School in Bath.

Shuttleworth said Walton received four write-in votes on Nov. 2. Tolan received the most write-in votes in Arrowsic, nine, while Marie James, a recently retired foreign language teacher, received eight write-in votes in Bath.

Shuttleworth said the day after the election that Tolan and James declined to be on the School Board.

“I think it’s one of the hardest jobs in America to be a School Board member today,” he said, explaining that the pay is low, the time commitment is demanding and the decisions to be made are often controversial.

But Shuttleworth noted that “I think the call to serve comes from an inner desire to feel like you do have a duty to make a contribution to the world that you live in. And I think it is really altruism that fuels people to do this work.”

Robin Buczkowski of Woolwich was the only person to run for the RSU’s District 1 seat in Bath and Woolwich, which is being vacated by Charles Durfee. She received 382 votes in Bath and 703 in Woolwich.

Walton and Buczkowski will be sworn in at the School Board’s January meeting.

Alex Lear can be reached at 373-9060 ext. 113 or alear@theforecaster.net.