Three Jersey City Board of Education candidates supported by the local teachers union appear to have easily won election in that eight-person race.

Incumbents Marilyn Roman and Mussab Ali along with Joan Terrell-Paige were the top vote-getters in the race, according to preliminary results from the Hudson County clerk's office. Roman came in first place with more than 20,000 votes.

All three will be seated in January to serve three-year terms. It will be Roman's third and Ali's first three-year term (he won election last year to a one-year term that expires in December).

"We thank the residents of our city for giving us this fiduciary responsibility as we transition into local control," Ali said in a statement.

Vidya Gangadin, an incumbent seeking her third term, appears to have lost, coming in fourth place, more than 5,500 votes behind Terrell-Page, the results show.

The results are bad for Schools Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles, who will lose a key ally in Gangadin. Roman and Ali have been sharply critical of Lyles' management of the 30,000-student district, the state's second largest.

Turnout was healthy. More than 103,000 votes were cast, compared to 60,438 in last year's school board race.

With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Roman has 22,786 votes, Ali 19,733 and Terrell-Page 18,032. Gangadin's total is 11,549, Dominique Smith 11,447 and Neil Abadie 9,479. Natalia Ioffe won 5,817 votes and Asmaa Abdalla 4,768.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.