Sullivan, Ortiz Win Student Ed Board Seats

Kimberly Sullivan and Coral Ortiz will be the first high school students to sit on New Haven’s Board of Education, following a pre-computer-age-style hand count that lasted 10 hours.

The Sound School rising senior and Hillhouse High School rising junior were elected to the two non-voting student seats on the board, after the election committee tallied votes in City Hall Friday evening well past midnight.

Ortiz and Sullivan trembled from excitement on finding out the results.

“It just worked out,” Ortiz said. ​“All this hard work has paid off.”

All the public high schools across the city held elections Thursday and Friday, with students voting at their own schools. A total of 3,469 students voted. The election committee counted the votes in City Hall meeting rooms starting at around 4 p.m. Friday. (Click here for a document of the results.)

Ortiz won a whopping 61.9 percent of the vote for the rising junior seat on the board, beating out her only contender, Wilbur Cross High School student Martin Clark. Sullivan received 32.6 percent of the vote against three others for the rising senior seat: Jesus Garzon and Delilah Quezada from Metropolitan Business Academy and Caroline Ricardo from High School in the Community.

Garzon was a close second at 28.5 percent, with Ricardo trailing at 23.2 percent and Quezada at 15.7 percent. Most students won the majority of their school’s votes. Garzon and Quezada split Metro’s votes — with Garzon getting twice as many.

Cross’s voter turnout of less than 20 percent — one of the lowest percentages in the city — was likely a factor in Clark’s loss.

Garzon, Ortiz and Sullivan were the only ones to show up to the vote counting Friday afternoon, and they stayed until the committee announced the final results at 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

Seven members of the election committee opened boxes of votes and counted each paper ballot by hand: Yale Alder Sarah Eidelson; Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg; Board of Ed President Carlos Torre; Joe Rodriguez, aldermanic liaison; Rachel Heerema, head of Citywide Youth Coalition; Superintendent Garth Harries; and Suzanne Lyons, project manager of College and Career Pathways.

They counted by hand instead of electronically, Eidelson said, because some schools did not have enough resources available to ​“cycle students through a computer lab.” Students are now taking the Common Core’s Smarter Balance Assessment, meaning fewer computers are available for electronic voting.

Two different people counted ballots from each of 26 ballot boxes and tallied votes on a master sheet. If their two numbers did not match, a third committee member recounted to break the tie.

Three officials monitored the process Friday afternoon: Amity/Beverly Hills Alder Richard Furlow, Deputy Corporation Counsel Cherie Phoenix and Adriana Joseph, the district’s interim chief of wraparound services.

Garzon and Sullivan brought friends and siblings with them to help endure the wait. Before the vote began, they discussed education policy. Whichever of them won, they decided, they would still collaborate on a project to improve the image of New Horizons, an alternative school for overage, under-credited students.

As the officials spread out in two City Hall meeting rooms with their boxes of ballots, the two election rivals played a friendly round of Apples to Apples — hours before learning which was to win the seat.

All the committee members were new to running an election; the system had its kinks. Eidelson proposed an amendment to the process that would have observers unfold the ballots and stack them, making it easier for counters to immediately read them. Joseph and Phoenix counter-proposed that members of public unfold ballots, so the monitors would not be violating election procedure.

They immediately voted Al Lucas, legislative services director, and Carolyn Ross-Lee, the district’s survey coordinator, to serve those roles, and added more throughout the evening. Harries joined as an ​“unfolder” a little after 6 p.m. and then took over counting ballots for Torre later in the night.

A few had questions about ballots marked unclearly. They decided to put those in the ​“other” pile until the final count.

At some schools, students voted for pairs of candidates as a set ticket. Others voted against specific schools: one Hillhouse High School student wrote ​“Fuck Cross” on a ballot, voting for Hillhouse candidate Ortiz instead of the Cross candidate Clark.

Greenberg showed the committee one ballot he had to invalidate: A student had crossed out Martin Clark’s last name and replaced it with ​“Luther King,” placing a check next to the new write-in candidate. Another wrote in ​“Stalin.”

Once school results were tallied and checked, Eidelson projected a spreadsheet on the wall and began to fill in the final counts. All three candidates decided to leave the room until all the numbers were finalized.

Kimberly Sullivan’s mother Debby Sullivan and Coral Ortiz’s mother Rosalyn Diaz-Ortiz nervously watched the numbers climb.

Debby Sullivan said it was hard for her daughter to campaign at some schools that had their own candidates. Some administrators didn’t want to let her in. But she said it was a learning curve for administrators as well as students. In future years, it was likely everyone would get better at the process.

Committee members said they would automatically call a recount of the ballots if any two results were within half a percentage point of each other. None were.

Mayor Toni Harp stopped by Co-op High School as the last of the students voted Friday morning. She said she was ​“looking forward to working with” the two new students on the board. Their voices would have been useful in past discussions about the budget or school reform, she said.

“As we think about some of the School Change initiatives, they can reflect on what works, what hasn’t and what we need more of,” Harp said.

Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola said Friday morning that election officials should not have coddled students through the process. Several students were late handing in their flyers to the election committee. They shouldn’t have been allowed to submit them, he said.

Next year, DeCola said he hopes the student candidate process will be stricter, more closely mirroring a municipal election.

Harries and Torre will recognize all six candidates at Monday’s Board of Education meeting at 5:30 p.m. at Martinez School.

An earlier version of this story follows:

Kyanne Sammy said she voted for fellow Hillhouse High student Coral Ortiz to join the Board of Education because the representation might boost her school’s reputation.

“Most people talk down on Hillhouse,” she said. ​“I love it … I voted for Coral.”

Sammy (pictured above at right, with Alder Sal DeCola) was one of hundreds of high school students who participated in Thursday’s first round of elections for the two Board of Ed student seats — and one of many unfamiliar with the majority of candidates and their platforms.

In the first-ever election of students to the board, one of four rising seniors will win one seat and one of two rising juniors will win the second. Sammy voted for Ortiz to get the junior seat and didn’t recognize any of the candidates running for the senior seat on the board. She hadn’t seen any of their signs around the city or the school. So she chose at random.

All public high schools are holding the citywide elections Thursday and Friday, with students voting at their own schools. The election committee plans to count the votes by hand 3 p.m. Friday.

Suzanne Lyons, who heads the election committee, said city and district staff stepped up at the last minute to help coordinate at different schools Thursday. ​“I anticipate most schools voting today” and catching stragglers Friday, she said. Voting ends 2:30 p.m. Friday.

Hillhouse civics teacher Jack Paulishen coordinated the school’s election Thursday with the help of Alders Aaron Greenberg, Richard Furlow and Sal DeCola. Each of the school’s three academies took turns sending their students to the polls, resulting in long snaking lines of voters-to-be along the side of the auditorium up to the stage.

Paulishen said district officials did a good job coordinating the school-level elections, in a way that mirrored local elections as closely as possible. Students went up to get their names checked off, then were given numbered ballots to fill out and place in the ballot box.

About 528 of about 1000 Hillhouse students voted Thursday morning, according to Paulishen and Greenberg.

Hillhouse senior Xavier Milling had helped to mold the election process for the student Board of Ed seats — he had wanted to run for a position, but he’s graduating this year. Milling said he doesn’t think ​“everyone understands the importance” of the process.

Many of his classmates are voting for the people ​“everyone is telling them to.” But getting a student on the board means ​“you literally have someone sitting next to you in the classroom to talk to about the Board of Ed,” when teachers and principals ​“are ignoring you,” he said.

He said he had never spoken to Ortiz and was planning to vote for candidates he knew from student council. ​“I would always want the process to be more informed,” he said.

Several spots behind him in line, junior Allenajah Spell suggested her classmates vote for her friend, since they didn’t know any of the candidates. They had all first heard about the election earlier that morning.

High School in the Community also has a student in the race: rising senior Caroline Ricardo. She spoke to HSC students Tuesday to ask for their support — and won the endorsement of the school’s student council.

“I have people supporting me,” Ricardo said Thursday. Students regularly come up to her and tell her how much they like her ideas, she said.

Her speech convinced senior Keyonte Jones (pictured) to vote Thursday afternoon. ​“She told us why she’s qualified at a schoolwide meeting,” he said. ​“I didn’t know the other ones.”

About 160 of 250 HSC students voted by 1 p.m. Thursday, said Cari Strand, the school’s magnet community coordinator.

Students interviewed at other schools Thursday gave different reasons for picking specific candidates.

New Light School senior Dejuan Ward said he voted for Ricardo because her face seemed ​“trustworthy.” He didn’t know much about any of the candidates — none of them came from his school. He looked through the faces on the poster and used those to make his decision.

For the rising junior seat, Ward said he chose Ortiz because he didn’t like Martin Clark’s school Wilbur Cross High.

Junior Jean Calcano looked past the faces to the candidate blurbs and voted based on which stood out most.

By noon Thursday, 14 of Ward’s classmates at the alternative high school had voted. Principal Larry Conaway said his goal was to get about 30 students to submit ballots.

Students seemed informed at Career High School, where they said they were excited to vote a peer onto the board, even though no one from their school was on the ballot.

Career Principal Madeline Negrón said school administrators worked to inform students about the individual candidates and their platforms before the election. 

“We made their flyers and their information available throughout the building so the kids will become knowledgeable about who their candidates are,” Negrón said. ​“We explained to them the importance that this is the first time this is happening, this is how they’re going to have a voice, and that they really need to think about who these candidates are.”

All of the students from Career, freshmen to seniors, stood in line in the library or in the gymnasium to cast their vote from 9:30 to 10:45. The walls of the hallways were lined with pictures of the candidates in the running, as well as bullet points of information that outlined the candidate’s platforms.

Students said they were glad to be gaining a bigger voice in the educational system. ​“A lot of times the kids have a lot of ideas since we’re actually in the system,” said Manaf Sami, a senior at Career, ​“so it’s all affecting us. I’m a senior now, but when I’m in college I’d definitely be interested in doing something like this.”

“It allows the students voice to get heard, because usually we feel like we’re underrepresented,” his classmate Josh Estores agreed. ​“With those places filled on the Board of Ed, we actually get to have our own ideas have representation.”

When asked if this is something that will likely happen in future years, Negrón laughed. ​“I sure hope so,” she said, as students chatted about their voting plans behind her.

Freesia DeNaples contributed reporting.

Previous coverage of the student-seat elections:
• Students Make Last Push For Board Of Ed Seats
• Vote For Me — Or At Least Please Vote
• Student Ed Board Candidates Make Their Case
• Students Launch School-Board Campaigns
• Slow Start To Student Race For Ed Board
• Final Rules Set For Hybrid Ed Board Elections
• Rules Set For ​“Hybrid” Ed Board Elections
• Students May Petition Way To School Board
• Grades, Attendance Still On Table As Factors For Student Board Of Education Hopefuls
• Students: Grades Shouldn’t Matter For Board Seat
• Should Board of Ed’s Student Rep Earn Cs?