Shaken by the failure of its $51 million budget, the Bedford school board plans to meet Wednesday to discuss what steps to take.

District Superintendent Bruce Dennis yesterday called the budget's 1,914-2,229 defeat "disappointing and disconcerting" and said he wanted to know what specific message was behind Wednesday's negative vote.

"There was precious little in the way of comment or criticism of the budget as it was being developed," he said.

"It was a very responsible bud-get to begin with. There is very little, if anything, to cut, so I honestly do not know what we are going to do," she said.

The board's options are putting the same budget out for another vote, revising it or adopting an austerity plan.

School officials speculated the budget failure was linked tothe contentious school board campaign, where challengers focused on what they described as out-ofcontrol spending.

In the board race, incumbent Trustee Joe Letersky lost his seat to first-time candidate Robert Frisch in a 2,132-2,208 vote. The other incumbents won by only a narrow margin. Burt Solomon received 2,296 votes to Joseph Giardina's 2,050, and Deborah Ellis Timberlake received 2,258 votes to Phil Christe's 2,081.

Solomon called the campaign "the hardest of the four that I've run," the most intense and the most personal.

All three incumbents said they wished the campaign had focused more on issues — particularly educational issues — and agreed a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation came out of it.

Last-minute campaign mailings — mostly anonymous —slung mud on both slates. One flier claimed Solomon and Letersky faced conflicts of interest on the board because their wives worked in schools, incorrectly identifying Solomon's wife as a union employee.

An anti-challengers' flier claimed, among other things, that the three did not believe children should own books.

"We just laugh every time we read that. Who could possibly take that seriously?" Giardina said.

Letersky said he was concerned about the tone of the campaign and a trend toward "pitting community against community.^" He said he planned to stay active in the schools despite his defeat.

"I feel proud of what I've done, and I still think there's a lot to do, and I'll just do it in a different way," he said.

Frisch, who defeated Letersky, called him a "terrific public servant" and said it was a shame the two were running for the same seat.

Although all three challengers said the district was spending too much money and needed to be tougher on teacher contracts, Frisch was the only one who said he thought the schools were doing a good job educating children.

He said yesterday he would pursue his campaign goals but would not come in with preconceived ideas of how to make changes.

"In the beginning, I'm just going to listen very closely to the community, to other board members, to the administrators, to the teachers," he said.

Despite his loss, Giardina said he was happy with both the high voter turnout and the close races.

"I'm very pleased. I think that a lot of the issues got out," he said.