GUILDERLAND — In a surprise move, Guilderland’s board of education voted Tuesday night to fill the seat  vacated by the resignation of Vice President Christopher McManus with Allan Simpson, a longterm board member who had been soundly ousted by voters in the most recent election, in May.

In a split vote, the board selected Simpson over Sean Maguire, the economic planner who had been just 20 votes behind McManus in the May election, soundly defeating Simpson. Maguire works for the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, while Simpson is the director of accounting operations at the New York State Insurance Fund.

Simpson served on the board from May 2010 through June 2017.

McManus announced his resignation in late October, citing a promotion and increased responsibilities at work.

Board President Christine Hayes, along with members Seema Rivera, Teresa Gitto, Timothy Horan, and Barbara Fraterrigo, voted for Simpson.

Voting against appointing Simpson were Catherine Barber, Judy Slack, and Gloria Towle-Hilt. Barber, who is married to town Supervisor Peter Barber, said at the meeting, “The reason I’m voting ‘no’ is because the seat was recently up for election, and voters spoke pretty clearly. Sean Maguire was within 20 votes of winning the seat, and I think we should not ignore that.”

Hayes said Wednesday that it had been a difficult decision, and that the main factor had been the short term — the appointment is for six months — and the fact that the board will soon have to begin work on the 2018-19 budget.

“When you come onto the board, it’s a sharp learning curve,” she said. Normally a board member has the summertime to begin to travel that curve. In this case, she said, she thought the students and the district would be best served by someone of Simpson’s experience.

Also, she said, an appointment by the board is a process separate and distinct from an election. Voters need to trust, she said, that the board members they have elected will be able to “make tough decisions” when necessary.

Hayes said she thinks Sean Maguire is a strong candidate and that he will be a “great board member” in the future.

In the May election, five candidates had vied for three seats.

The top vote-getter was newcomer Timothy Horan, a Pine Bush Elementary School teacher set to retire that spring, with 1,495 votes; Horan had the enthusiastic backing of the teachers’ union. Next was long-time board member and retired teaching assistant Judy Slack, with 1,321. Third was McManus, who works for the New York State Division of Budget, with 1,146 votes.

Finishing just 20 votes behind McManus was Maguire, with 1,126 votes. Simpson received 782 votes, which was almost 350 less than Maguire.

At a special meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 8 moderated by Guilderland High School senior Matthew Creighton, the school board publicly interviewed the six people who had applied to replace McManus.

The board met in executive session before its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, and, at the start of the meeting, voted to appoint Simpson.

Seema Rivera — who was voted vice president of the board at that same meeting — said on Wednesday that the decision had been “very difficult,” and that there were “more than one, more than two” qualified people who had been interested in serving. She said she kept an open mind through the process and “thought about many different points of view.” In the end, she said, she had to do what she thought was best for the students and the community.

There were four other candidates, besides Simpson and Maguire:

— Pamela McCall, director of the College and High School Partnerships program at Schenectady County Community College, where she not only works in the dual-enrollment program but also helps at-risk and underrepresented students at Schenectady High School get college credits while still in high school. She also serves on the YMCA youth development board called Black and Latino Scholars and has started a minority mentoring program at SCCC. McCall has a 3-year-old daughter who will attend Guilderland Elementary School in two years;

— Eli Newell, a businessman who, since retiring four years ago, has begun to focus on education, studying in the Humanities Institute for Lifelong Learning in the Bethlehem School District,  auditing a class at the University at Albany, acting as a docent at the Institute of History and Art in Albany, and serving as a mentor to young people starting out in business, through the not-for-profit organization SCORE;

— Heather Wendling, who has worked for 13 years at “strengthening the school system in New York State,” she said at the candidates’ interview: first as an elementary special-education teacher, then at the administrative level for the State University of New York, “opening and strengthening and overseeing its portfolio of charter schools.” She now serves as director of learning and knowledge management for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Wendling has a son who attends Guilderland Elementary School and a daughter at Farnsworth Middle School; and

— Benjamin Goes, a 2014 Guilderland High School graduate and a 2016 graduate of the University at Albany now in his second year of studies at Albany Law School.

Sean Maguire said Wednesday, “I’m clearly disappointed. The board had six candidates to choose from, and unfortunately five of the eight decided to return a defeated board member to the school board. That’s disappointing, to say the least.”

Maguire was not present at Tuesday night’s meeting; he said Wednesday that, after losing the election in the spring, he decided to teach a graduate course on strategic planning at UAlbany. He was teaching on Tuesday night.

Barring any unforeseen changes, Maguire does plan to run for the board again in the next election.

He was encouraged, he said, by his finish in the May 2017 election: “To finish 20 votes behind the vice president of the board, and then to defeat another incumbent by almost 350 votes, that was encouraging,” he said this week.

The next election is scheduled for May 15, 2018. The seats open will be those currently held by Simpson, Hayes, Rivera, and Barber.

Rivera, who has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University at Albany and was first elected to the board in 2015, said on Wednesday that she is not sure if she will run again in the spring.

Hayes, an attorney who serves as associate counsel for Albany Medical Center, said on Wednesday that she has been giving a lot of thought to whether or not to run for re-election in the spring and that, at this point, she thinks that she probably will not. It has been six years, she said, and “It’s nice to get people with families and new, fresh ideas in there.”