Marin County elections officials will launch a hand recount Friday into the tightly decided Sausalito Marin City School District board of trustees election on Nov. 6.

After a seesaw battle for the third open seat over the past month as outstanding absentee and provisional ballots were counted, candidate Bonnie Hough, who ran on a slate supporting equity for Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, emerged as the winner Friday by only eight votes over Jennifer Irwin Conway, a parent of a child at Willow Creek Academy charter school in Sausalito who ran on a three-person slate supporting Willow Creek.

While incumbents Ida Green and Josh Barrow were handily re-elected to the first two open seats, the occupant of the third seat is thought to hold a key influence over which part of the sharply divided district holds the most power on the board. During the campaign, different ideas emerged as to the best way to structure the district that straddles different racial and socioeconomic population centers in Marin City and Sausalito.

The hand recount, which will include all eight precincts in the district and all candidates in what was a seven-way race, was requested by Willow Creek parent Jeffrey Knowles of Sausalito. State election code allows any registered voter to request a recount within five days of final vote certification, said Lynda Roberts, Marin County Registrar of Voters.

Roberts said Knowles’ recount request came in Tuesday by email, followed by a FedEx received at the county elections office on Wednesday. The final election results were certified Friday.

She said the county will engage two counting boards of four people each, for a total of eight counting board members. Elections staff will also help with the absentee ballots, which are stored in batches, Roberts said.

The hand recount, which is public, will take place starting at 8:30 a.m. Friday at Marin County Civic Center, Elections Department, Suite 121, 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael. She said she expects it to last two or three days (not including the weekend), for at least six hours a day until the recount is complete.

Roberts, in her notice to Hough, indicated that Knowles was making the request “on behalf of Jennifer Irwin.”

According to Hough, Knowles is on the board of the Willow Creek Academy and “was an active supporter of the TeamUpForAllKids slate of Josh Barrow, Jenn Conway and Kurt Weinsheimer,” she said in an email.

“If the recount changes the results, Jenn would join Josh and Caroline Van Alst as a third Willow Creek parent on the board,” Hough said. “That might well impact future discussions regarding terms of the MOU (memorandum of understanding) between the district and the charter school and other decisions about the district.”

Hough said she stands by her goal, espoused during the campaign, of “trying to make sure that both schools in the district are served effectively and to support the concept of a community school,” she said. “I certainly hope that we will be able to have further discussion of joining as one school as was advocated by Jenn during the campaign. I am sure that all of us would like to work together to come up with great solutions for our children.”

Irwin Conway could not be reached for comment Thursday.