In Tuesday’s run-off election Dr. Kirit Chapatwala, currently a professor at Selma University, won in a landslide. He out dueled is opponent Cynthia Harris by 37 percent.

On Tuesday Chapatwala won by 812 votes and additionally he won each polling location in District 1 by more than 50 percent. After the Aug. 28 municipal election, Chapatwala left with 848 votes and Harris had 697. The 151 vote margin was small enough to push the two into a run off where Harris said she was glad to compete.

“I do support Dr. Chapatwala and I do appreciate him running a good race and a clean race,” Harris said, who also mentioned she cared so much about the school board race because her son is still a student in the system. “So I have got to keep fighting.”

Chapatwala was busy thanking God and those who voted for him after his victory.

“I left it up to God and the public supported me and many, many people worked with me unpaid more than I worked campaigning,” Chapatwala said and added that his family has been the main support for him at home, “The public supported me and I have faith in the public.”

He said there are two things he wants to focus on from day one of being in office — budget and finding out what is forcing students and their parents to look to privatized education.

“I would like to see where the budget is going, where the money is being spent, because before I left the school system a lot of money was there,” he said. “Secondly, [the school system is] losing students to private schools, in spite of us building a brand new beautiful building … we must ask why school system students are not doing well.”