Cerasi Returns To Board of Education

Elizabeth Cerasi has returned to the .

The board Wednesday night chose Cerasi – who served a four-year term beginning in 1995 – to fill out the unexpired term of Sherri Underland, who resigned last month in the wake of a criminal charge.

The term runs until Dec. 2013.

Cerasi, 57, of the Barnsleigh East neighborhood, was one of two applicants. The other was Surya Vedula, a member of the board of School Lane Charter School. Both were given a maximum of five minutes to make their case during Wednesday's public meeting.

Vedula said he has lived in the township 11 years and is the father of four children.

Cerasi said she has been a Bensalem resident since 1991. She said her previous board tenure gave her an “enormous amount” of knowledge about how both the board and the state Department of Education work, which would be “invaluable.”

The board appointed Cerasi 6-1, with Yagnesh Choksi dissenting. Board member Kathleen Lesnevec was absent.

Cerasi's name plate was immediately seen in front of her after she took her board seat. Asked about that, Superintendent David Baugh said the plate was from her previous tenure.

Cerasi has worked as a bookkeeper at a Trenton firm since 1987. She attended Little Flower Catholic High School in Philadelphia and attended Philadelphia Community College.

Elected in 2009, Underland was charged with marijuana possession along with her husband in March. Police were investigating her then-19-year-old son and that probe led to the issuance of a search warrant of the family's house. According to published reports, during a search police found drug paraphernalia and marijuana in her son’s room as well as a pill bottle containing marijuana in Underland’s bedroom.

Underland previously told Patch her husband had found and removed a small amount of marijuana from their son’s bedroom and put it in the dresser in their bedroom.  She also has said her son had been to rehab and this summer was in a multi-car accident, which left him temporarily disabled.

She had missed seven of 15 board meetings this year, and six of seven since it became public she faced the criminal charge.

Underland, 42, was accepted into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program. ARD is a pretrial program for first-time, nonviolent offenders, in which their record is cleared following a probationary period.