Parents need not be alarmed by the thought of a school board member who had drunkenly promised to supply “an array of women to dance for you” to a group of high school boys he was addressing on a party bus after their prom.

That’s because Vito D’Alessio lost his bid in Tuesday’s election for one of three seats on the Nutley Board of Education, and the 48-year-old retired Essex County Sheriff’s Department captain and father of two will not become a school board member.

In fact, D’Alessio was the low vote-getter among the six candidates for three seats on the Nutley school board, and his two running mates also lost, all by a wide margin, according to unofficial election results tallied Tuesday night.

“I take full responsibility for it," D’Alessio told NJ Advance Media in a phone interview on Wednesday, as well as in an apology video his campaign had posted on its Facebook page before the election.

“We all have silly things we did,” he said in the interview. "I lost the election. I accept it. I just want to move on.”

D’Alessio’s 1,344 votes were slightly fewer than what his running mates on the “CDR” team, Ralph Chimento and Dominick Ritacco, received, and about half the number received by the winners from the Nutley Town Team, Frank DeMaio (2,921), Charles W. Kucinski (2,571), and Daniel A. Carnicella (2,313).

None of the other candidates, winners or losers, responded to requests for comment.

D’Alessio, whose two sons who are products of Nutley schools, had run on his experience dealing with school security issues, his presidency of booster clubs for the local youth football organization and the Nutley High School wrestling team, and, among other qualifications, “chaperoning for school events.”

But on top of the usual challenger’s disadvantage in an election, D’Alessio’s campaign was marred by a pair of cell phone videos that circulated after having captured scenes likely to be troubling for many parents and other voters weighing who should be making decisions about the taxpayer-funded education of children and teenagers and their lives in and around school.

He said he was sure that the circulation of the videos in advance of the election was politically motivated, though he did not make any direct accusations.

But he also acknowledged he had no one but himself to blame, and that he regretted most of all the hurt and embarrassment the episode had caused his family, particularly his wife, a teacher. In one of the two videos, copies of which were obtained by NJ Advance Media, D’Alessio stands on a dimly but colorfully-lit bus customized for in-transit celebrating, and offers advice to about 20 animated girls dressed in shorts and tank-tops.

“Important life lessons: deny everything; demand proof; make counter-accusations,” D’Alessio advised them, holding what appears to be an open beer bottle in his hand, before he walks out of the frame while being cheered by the girls.

D’Alessio told NJ Advance Media that the bus was parked at the time outside a house in Nutley, where the girls and a separate busload of boys had gone to change out of their gowns and tuxedos for the ride to a private house in upstate New York. There, he said, the 45 girls and boys would party over that weekend like any other group of red-blooded American teens after their prom.

He said he was asked by another adult at the house to have a word with the teens before they left on the trip upstate.

In a second video, D’Alessio is inside a similar bus, this time with the boys, who are also dressed casually for the ride upstate. He gives them a brief motivational speech, already in mid-sentence when the minute-long clip begins.

“You guys are the most important thing to the future of America!” he tells them, his voice rising to the feverish pitch of a coach whose team is behind at half-time.

The boys respond with a cheer that quickly morphs into a brief chant of “U-S-A, U-S-A!” D’Alessio then promises to arrange and pay for exotic, racially diverse live entertainment for the boys during their upcoming post-prom weekend.

“And Saturday — because I am not prejudice — I will bring an array of different women up to dance for you, on my dime,” he says, to cheers.

D’Alessio acknowledged he had been drinking that day, though he said he could not recall whether he was drinking on the buses. But he emphasized that no alcohol had been provided for the teens, and that he was not acting as a school chaperone.

“There was no alcohol on that bus,” other than what he may have been drinking, he told NJ Advance Media.

D’Alessio said he didn’t remember much of what came out of his mouth that day, but that he regretted the incident. He also acknowledged that, had he not chosen to run for school board, the incident would have gone unnoticed by almost anyone who wasn’t on either bus.

“You run for office, you put yourself out there,” D’Alessio said. “If I hadn’t run for office, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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