Paul Bass Photo
O’Connell: If I don’t do it …
The Republican running for a seat on New Haven’s Board of Education found a way to interest kids in science: Encouraging them to commit murder.
Well, let’s put “murder” in quotation marks. For the sake of accuracy.
O’Connell (pictured) is seeking the District 1 seat in the Nov. 3 general election, the first time New Haveners get to vote for school-board seats. The board is changing from a fully mayorally-appointed entity to a “hybrid” with two elected seats plus a student seat. O’Connell faces Democrat Edward Joyner. (In District 2, the only candidate is Democrat Darnell Goldson.)
By day O’Connell, who is 62 and lives in Westville, teaches science at Sacred Heart High School in Waterbury. He has taught there for 37 years. He compared the job to “being paid to play baseball.” That means he loves it.
In recent years, O’Connell — who has also worked as a parademic — has incorporated forensic science into his class. He has half of his class of seniors stage a mock crime in a room at the school, making use of a dummy. Then he has the other half of the class go about solving the crime.
The seniors tend to choose homicide as the crime. “They’ve had [a murdered dummy] hanging from the fire sprinkler pole,” he said.
If elected — a prospect he called a longshot at best — O’Connell hasn’t proposed injecting murder into the conversation of Board of Education meetings. He does plan to inject an independent voice.
That’s why he’s running, he said in an interview Monday on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program. He wore a tie decorated with chemical beakers and test tubes containing liquids of varying colors — “indicating a chemical reaction.”
In a city that last elected a Republican mayor in 1951, that has no Republicans in any contested elected offices, “somebody has to stand up,” he argued. “You have to offer voters a choice” because uncontested elections are “not good for democracy.”
On specifics, O’Connell didn’t differ much from views Democratic opponent Joyner has expressed in these interviews.
Like Joyner, O’Connell opposed the decision to break Hillhouse High School into three internal academies. “There can only be one leader in a school,” he argued. He, too, said he would have voted against the ultimately plan to launch a joint Board of Ed-Achievement First experimental school called “Imagine.” He, too, expressed reluctance to approve more charter schools in town.
And like Joyner, he spoke of addressing the social problems kids face outside of school. “Our kids come to school with a huge amount of baggage,” he said. “School should be a six-hour island during the day” where students are “challenged to be the absolute best they can be.”
“We do agree on quite a few things,” O’Connell said of himself and Joyner. “I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Dr. Joyner has a lot of educational experience. The only difference [is] I’m not beholden to anyone.” He argued that because Joyner has the endorsement of the Democratic Party, that puts him in the party’s debt.
Joyner, who said he respects O’Connell, declared that if elected he won’t be beholden to any interests.
“The difference between me running for the school board. The only non-negotiable in my entire life is kids. There’s not any person or any party that can get a commitment from me to put the party interests above the child’s interests. Whatever it takes to help kids, I’m willing to do,” Joyner said. He gave an example: “I don’t believe in [Democratic] President Obama’s educational policy. I think he should have discontinued No Child Left Behind and developed a human-development policy. Those kids need more time, more support. They need less judgment.”
Emphasizing the importance of “reaching across the aisle, even if there aren’t a lot of people on the other side,” Joyner vowed if elected to sit with O’Connell to discuss education issues. Joyner said he has raised $17,000 to date; he has a headquarters on Whalley Avenue.
In Monday’s interview, O’Connell refrained from criticizing Mayor Toni Harp for getting elected president of the school board. “She should have a leadership role,” he said. He did criticize her remark in this article that she doesn’t expect to make all the meetings. “If you’re the chair,” he said, “my gosh, you’ve got to go” to the meetings.
O’Connell doesn’t have a committee helping him in the campaign. He doesn’t have flyers to pass out. He hasn’t raised any significant money.
Markeshia Ricks File Photo
O’Connell campaigning last year for state representative.
He has similarly operated low-tech for many of the campaigns he has run as a Republican over the past 30 years years — for state senator (against then-Sen. Harp), for state representative , for alder. (“I almost feel like Harold Stassen.”) He’s never gotten half the vote, or close. He doesn’t expect to win in such an overwhelmingly Democratic city. But he said voters have a right to a choice — which he’ll keep giving them.
And if lightning does strike, handing him victory? O’Connell said he’s ready to serve — and attend the meetings,
Click on the above sound file to hear O’Connell’s full interview.
Click on this sound file to hear the previous interview with Joyner and Goldson.
This is a perfect candidate. An educator, innovative track record and independence. Come to think of it, that's something no other candidate can claim. With a straight face.