Vashon voters spoke clearly when they cast their ballots last Tuesday: At least when it comes to the school board, they’re ready for change.

In a clean sweep, the three challengers defeated the three incumbents by wide margins, suggesting Islanders were unhappy with the last several months of controversy, the district’s financial struggles and its handling of former Superintendent Mimi Walker, who resigned last month after the board voted it had probable cause to dismiss her.

“It was a very anti-incumbent mood out there,” said Bob Hennessey, a former congressional aide and one of two school board members not up for re-election this year. “I have no doubt that if all five of us were on the ballot, all five of us would have been turned out by heavy margins.”

With hundreds of absentee ballots still to be counted, Dan Chasan defeated Susan Lofland, 65 to 35 percent, Kathy Jones defeated Gene Lipitz, 64 to 36 percent, and Laura Wishik defeated Jake Jacobovitch, 59 to 41 percent.

So far, about 4,000 ballots have been counted, putting Vashon’s turnout at around 50 percent — low by Island standards but considerably higher than the countywide turnout of around 40 percent.

Political observers say the vote totals suggest widespread voter unhappiness with the current school board, particularly in light of the fact that the three challengers, ideologically and professionally, are not terribly different from the incumbents they defeated.

“Clearly we want a new school board,” said Islander May Gerstle, who pays close attention to Island politics. “The numbers were clear, even though the incumbents who were defeated were very good school board members. They’re not dumb. They’re not incompetent. … Yet they were trounced.”

Carol Merz Frankel, an Islander who was dean of the University of Puget Sound’s School of Education for 18 years until she retired two years ago, said she was not surprised by the results. Frankel wrote her dissertation on conflicts between school boards and superintendents and studied the politics of local school districts. Noting that school board seats often go unchallenged, she said the Island’s anti-incumbent mood was clear last June, when candidates filed to run for office.

“As soon as you saw serious opposition to every incumbent, in my mind the die was cast,” Frankel said. “I don’t think there was anything the incumbents could have done to change that. It was just a community movement.”

Within a month, after the vote totals are certified, the new school board members will begin serving with the two incumbents — Hennessey and John “Oz” Osborne, both of whom supported the efforts to dismiss Walker and worked closely with the three defeated incumbents. Frankel, however, said she thinks the new board will come together easily.

“I don’t think the new board represents a different constituency than the old board. And you don’t have single-issue candidates who will be butting heads with others. In fact, if you look at their position statements, the challengers are very similar to the incumbents,” she said. “I think it was more of a symbolic defeat than opposition to any particular candidate.”

The newly elected board members also said they think they’ll work well with Hennessey and Osborne and expect the board will dive in quickly to address the many serious issues before it.

“I respect both of the current board members, and I think we’ll work together fine,” Wishik said.

Chasan, who spent 18 years on the school board, said the new board members will likely give the board the fresh start it needs to address its financial issues, recruit a new superintendent and figure out how what to do about its aging facilities.

“Rightly or wrongly, there’s a lot of negative feeling about the existing board, and I don’t think you could get past that without changing the faces at the table,” he said. “And now they’ve changed, and I think we can move on.”

Even some of the defeated board members said they harbored no ill will towards their challengers or the voters’ decision to put new people in place. Lipitz, who has spent untold hours studying the way school districts work, said he was disappointed by the results. But he added that he thinks the new board is in good hands.

“It’s very common to say about an opponent that if they win, everything’s going to go to pot. But I don’t think that’s the case,” he said. “None of these new board members have an ax to grind or a single issue to push. And I feel good about that.”

When the new board meets in December, it will have several issues to address, including a timeline for a new facilities plan and a process for selecting a new superintendent. Terry Lindquist, the district’s acting superintendent, came out of retirement to take the job at Vashon. Hennessey hopes the board will find a way to retain him for another full year, enabling the district, he said, to continue to right itself before it tries to recruit a new superintendent.

“I feel Terry’s been a gift from heaven, and I’m of the mind that we support him and the reforms he has articulated,” Hennessey added.