Slow Start To Student Race For Ed Board

Kimberly Sullivan has a lot of opinions on education policy to share with the district. But she said she would prioritize the voices of her student constituents if elected to serve on the Board of Education.

As the board moves to include two non-voting high-school student members, Sullivan is the only one so far to throw her hat in the ring.

After months of discussion and input from community members, the Board of Alders finalized the process governing the elections and appointments of high-school members in late March. It now has limited time to put it into action.

With the deadline for students to run coming up May 7, the schedule is tight. Many students still don’t know anything about the new positions. But election committee members say they expect more to join Sullivan in the race when schools reopen after spring break this week.

Created in the wake of a 2013 citywide charter revision referendum, the city’s eight-member Board of Ed will become a hybrid board, with four mayoral appointees, two members elected by the public and two non-voting student members. Until now, the mayor has appointed all members of the board.

One rising junior and one rising senior will serve on the board. To run for a seat on New Haven’s reconstituted Board of Ed, students must obtain 100 petition signatures from fellow students, including 50 from five different schools other than their own.

A junior at Sound School, Sullivan has already gathered the 50 signatures from classmates at her school. She went around to a few different classrooms and targeted freshmen and sophomores who might not already know her.

“I asked for suggestions of who they thought the ideal candidate should be” and the characteristics that candidate should have, Sullivan said. Many said they wanted a ​“honest” and easily accessible representative. Others said they wanted someone who could ​“promise them things. I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, with a laugh. ​“But I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep.”

Spreading The Word

A seven-member election committee will oversee the election process for students. It will include two alders, two Board of Education representatives, two community leaders chosen by the Board of Alders, and one member of the mayor’s staff. At past aldermanic committee meetings, representatives had discussed allowing student designees to take their spots on the election committee. But they nixed that idea in the final ordinance.

“When discussing the process, we received input from some students who felt there shouldn’t actually be students on the committee because they would be biased,” said Yale Alder Sarah Eidelson, Youth Services Committee chair. ​“They felt it was more important to have a range of stakeholders and to reserve the authority of the committee to choose candidates.”

Those candidates will have until June 4 to campaign, and students from all 10 high schools will then vote two of them into the positions.

The all-adult committee is now focusing on making sure as many students as possible pick up their petitions and that students are informed enough to eventually vote in the election, said Suzanne Lyons, one of the Board of Ed reps on the committee along with board President Carlos Torre. She is asking each school to appoint a staff member to transmit information on a school level.

And they asked members of the citywide ​“student cabinet,” made up of student leaders from each school, to brainstorm tactics that would work — including making morning announcements, posting in school newspapers, and putting a notice in report cards going out at the end of April.

They decided not to designate the student councils exclusively responsible for outreach, so that a broader range of students might decide to run. ​“We also want to be mindful of making sure the students understand that you don’t have to be connected with the student council to run,” Eidelson said.

Ten students have already spoken to her about their plans to run for the position, Lyons said. Students can pick up their petitions from the superintendent’s office at 54 Meadow St.

“The intention of the process was for students to have more of a voice and take leadership,” Eidelson said. She wants to make sure the process ​“feels serious and credible for students” without making it ​“prohibitively complicated.” The ordinance leaves room for the election committee to recommend changes in the process for future years.

Power To The Students

Sullivan is a regular participant at board meetings already, often standing at the podium to offer a student’s perspective on the agenda items. She decided to run for an elected student position because it was a ​“way of interacting with the board on a larger scale.”

“I want people to be comfortable with the idea that students in high school can have the authority to make decisions, the same way a teacher could or a principal could,” she said. ​“We’re educated enough about our own schools.”

She said she is passionate about ensuring that students with poor grades have access to more educational resources and to secondary alternatives other than college. A vocational aquaculture school, Sound does not have this problem. But ​“at most schools, it’s ​‘college this, college that,’” she said, and many students might not know that other career and vocational opportunities exist.

But Sullivan said she plans to keep her opinions in check. ​“I would try to restrict myself and not let my own opinions speak” over other students, she said. If elected, Sullivan said she would regularly attend large events at various schools and interact with students, ​“to gain a sense of what they want.”

Sullivan’s education at Sound School is far from traditional and very different than others in New Haven public schools. The school’s curriculum is based on the water, with students carrying out marine research and learning sea safety.

“Boats and fish labs,” as Sullivan puts it.

But she doesn’t think her outlier experience would hinder her from connecting with kids at other schools. A lifelong New Haven resident, she attended Conte-West for elementary school and Mauro-Sheridan for middle school. And she keeps up with what’s going on in her city. She is a member of Superintendent Garth Harries’s citywide high school ​“student cabinet” and volunteers teaching music to younger kids at Neighborhood Music School.

She graduates from high school at the end of next year and wants to ​“stay local,” maybe with the help of the New Haven Promise program, which offers free tuition for students who meet certain academic requirements. Regularly attending Board of Education meetings convinced her to be a teacher. She hopes to study music education in college.

When Sullivan gets the 50 other signatures on her petition by May 7, she can begin campaigning until the June 6 election. She said she will rely on face-to-face interactions more than social media, but she worries about getting to students at larger schools. ​“It’s hard to talk to everyone at big schools. At small schools, you can just go and see most students in one day,” she said. ​“I’m nervous that people just vote for someone at their school” instead of for the best candidate.

The election committee meetings are held every Wednesday at 5 p.m. at City Hall and are open to the public.

For past coverage:
• 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?