North Huntingdon businessman Tony Corsa named to Norwin School Board

A North Huntingdon businessman was elected Thursday to the Norwin School Board from among a field of 18 candidates.

Tony Corsa, 42, won the support of seven of the eight board members during the second vote to fill the vacancy created by the Dec. 2 resignation of Barbara Viola. Corsa will serve the remaining two years of Viola’s term, which expires in December 2021.

Director Donald Rhodes voted “present” after seeing that Corsa already had the five votes needed to win the seat.

Corsa, the father of two children, is a former commercial real estate manager and co-owner of a company, Achieving True Self, that serves children and adolescents on the autism spectrum.

Serving on the school board “is an opportunity to give back” to the community, Corsa said following the vote.

Corsa got four votes in the initial vote, while Kimberly Piekut of North Huntingdon, got two votes, and Dan Rose of Irwin and Robert Eagleson of North Huntingdon each received one vote. Piekut, a South Allegheny teacher, did not get any votes in the runoff against Corsa.

School Board President Brian Carlton said he supported Corsa because, “I think Corsa was the man to add diversity to the board.“

Both Carlton and William Essay commented on how difficult the decision was of the strong field of candidates.

Essay said he switched his support from Piekut to Corsa in the second round of voting because he realized that Piekut would not get the five votes necessary to win the seat.

“I wanted to guarantee that we (school board) made the decision,” on the board member, Essay said.

Essay was appointed by a Westmoreland County judge in January when the previous board couldn’t agree on a replacement for Shawn Petrisko, who resigned in August 2018. After several attempts failed to get five school directors to agree on one candidate, Viola petitioned the court to intervene.

Carlton, a Penn-Trafford teacher, did not vote for any of the teachers who were among the 14 candidates the board interviewed.

Piekut, who lost her bid for a seat on the board in the November election, is a teacher, as are Eagleson and Justin Gogolsky. Jennifer Fitzgerald is an emergency substitute teacher for Norwin. Jane Coughenour, a McKeesport Area administrator, had informed the board she could not be at the interview because of a prior commitment. One teacher, Jennifer Blasko, withdrew her name from consideration.

“I believe we have enough teachers on the board,”Carlton said.

Two directors, William Essay and Robert Wayman, are retired teachers, and one of the new directors, Patrick Lynn, is a teacher at Woodland Hills.