Boyertown school board appoints Szczurowski to Region 2

The Boyertown Area School District board appointed Jason Szczurowski to a vacant Region 2 seat on Tuesday, giving the seat to a candidate who narrowly lost a November election for the same region.

The board voted at its August 11 committee-of-the-whole meeting, a working session of the full board, held at the district's Education Center on Montgomery Avenue, and swore Szczurowski in the same night. He fills the unexpired term of James Brophy, who resigned from a Region 2 seat, and will serve until the board reorganizes in December 2027.

The nine-member board had been operating with eight directors since Brophy left. The motion to appoint Szczurowski, made by Michelle Wiley and seconded by Christine Neiman, carried with seven directors voting yes and none against.

A seat he ran for, and lost, in November

Two residents applied for the opening and were interviewed at a special meeting on August 4: Szczurowski and Lisa Hogan.

Szczurowski, a Democrat, had run for a Region 2 seat on the same board nine months earlier. In the November 4, 2025 municipal election he lost to Republican Anthony Panarello, 826 votes to 798, a margin of 28. Panarello is now the board's president, and he was among the seven members who voted to appoint Szczurowski on Tuesday.

The seat Szczurowski now holds is not the one he ran for last fall. Boyertown's nine school directors are elected from three regions, and Region 2 holds more than one seat. Brophy's seat, which the board just filled, carries a term through 2027 and was not on the 2025 ballot. The seat Szczurowski lost in November was a separate Region 2 seat, the one Panarello won.

What happens next

The appointment runs only until the board reorganizes in December 2027, when the winners of the November 2027 municipal election take their seats. Region 2 voters will decide who holds the seat after that.

Why a school board seat matters

School boards set the largest line on most Berks County property tax bills, ahead of county and municipal taxes. How the three layers of your bill stack up is in our guide to how a Berks County property tax bill is split, and what the county controls versus your school district and township is in how Berks County government works. Boyertown Area's board oversees schools across eastern Berks County and part of Montgomery County.

Berks Beat now tracks every public school board in the county. For a recent example of a board decision that landed on tax bills, see how Schuylkill Valley raised taxes 3 percent in its 2026-27 budget.

Note on the name: the district's August 11 appointment motion spells the surname "Sczwoski." Berks Beat uses "Szczurowski," the spelling in the county's 2025 election results and the district's own August 4 candidate list.