Students Launch School-Board Campaigns

When Isabel Quezada lists all the extracurricular activities she pursues , ​“people think I’m amazing and great,” she said. But the budding public office-seeker wants to people to know that’s not true — that it’s New Haven itself that’s amazing and great.

The rising Metropolitan Business Academy senior is one of three students who joined the race early this week for the student position of the Board of Education, as New Haven prepares for its first-ever school board elections.

City voters will elect two adult members of the board this fall. Before that, students will elect two members to the board from among their ranks.

Quezada and two High School in the Community Students have started gathering the 100 signatures on a petition needed to be declared candidates in the upcoming election. All three students come from different neighborhoods and backgrounds, but all said they wanted to show the board that student voices can be powerful additions to conversations on education policy.

As the May 7 deadline looms for student candidates to run in the election, an all-adult election committee is still wrangling with several procedural questions about how the non-voting student positions will work — with the help of a lawyer.

After a 2013 citywide charter revision referendum, the city’s eight-member Board of Ed is going from being a mayoral-elected body to a hybrid board, with four mayoral appointees, two members elected by the public and two non-voting student members. The Board of Alders finalized the ordinances guiding the election process in late March. The election for the student seats takes place June 4; voters will choose the adult members of the board in the Nov. 3 general election.

Now students have two weeks to decide whether they want to run and to fill a petition with 100 student signatures, half from their school and half from five other New Haven public schools.

One rising junior and one rising senior will serve on the board. Currently one rising junior and three rising seniors are running for those two positions. Sound School rising senior Kimberly Sullivan was the first to pick up her petition from the superintendent’s office.

Three New Contenders

After students returned from spring break this week, Quezada, Samantha Montes, and Caroline Ricardo headed to 54 Meadow St. to get their petitions.

Quezada got all 100 signatures within a couple of days, making sure to talk to freshman and sophomores at MBA with whom she was less familiar. One of her friends is giving her informal photography lessons and she is ​“addicted to coffee,” so she frequents New Haven’s coffee shops and takes photos around the city.

She moved to New Haven from West Haven last year after her parents divorced and she moved in with her father so she could attend a school in the city. They live in the Annex neighborhood. Quezada tutors students at New Haven Reads and is part of Junta’s youth group, so she is used to taking the bus around the city to get to different commitments.

She said she would survey students regularly, if elected to the Board of Ed, to see what issues are coming up in each of the district’s 10 high schools.

“I do [a lot] because I love the town I live in. I want to do anything I can to help it,” she said.

HSC rising junior Samantha Montes said she would set up a sub-board of student representatives from each high school, in order to keep updated on the issues to bring to the Board of Ed. Students would be able to submit concerns and questions in ​“question boxes” set up in each school. ​“It would be a way for schools to connect.”

Montes (pictured) lives in public housing complex Valley Townhouses. She said she appreciates all the help and support she gets through city initiatives. But she said she wants to be considered a student who works hard, ​“one of those who reaches out and helps other people.” Many of her peers who live where she does ​“don’t try as hard because they don’t think they can rise up higher,” she said.

She was employed last summer through the city’s Youth@Work employment initiative as a counselor for Your Place Youth Center in Newhallville. ​“When the city offered me the opportunity, I jumped at it,” she said.

Montes said she worries not enough students will know about the candidates or the election process by election day June 4.

“Half of the students don’t know what’s going,” agreed Ricardo, an HSC rising senior.

Ricardo (pictured) said she wants to represent the students having a hard time ​“getting up from bed in the morning because they don’t find joy in coming to school. I went through something like that and I got help from school,” she said. Guidance counselors and her parents helped her through her lack of motivation. ​“Sometimes adults don’t know what’s going on in the community of students.”

Ricardo filled her petition with 100 signatures from several different schools soon after she picked it up. She moved to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic with her family five years ago and started speaking English her freshman year. ​“And look where I am now,” she said.

She is a member of her school’s youth court, which uses restorative methods to work with students who have acted out to repair that harm.

Neither have yet gone to Board of Ed meetings. They said they worry transportation problems may prevent them from getting to John Martinez School in Fair Haven before the election is over. Committee members said they will talk to students about becoming familiar with taking public transportation to and from board meetings.

Legal Questions

At an election committee meeting last Wednesday night at City Hall, members brought procedural questions to the Board of Ed’s lawyer Floyd Dugas (pictured) of law firm Berchem, Moses & Devlin.

Six adults sit on the committee: Board of Ed reps Suzanne Lyons and Carlos Torre, Alders Sarah Eidelson and Aaron Greenberg, mayoral designee Joe Rodriguez and City Youth Coalition director Rachel Heerema. Superintendent Garth Harries filled in for Board of Ed president Carlos Torre Wednesday.

“None of us has ever invented an election process before,” Eidelson said. They wanted to know: Would the students, as non-voting members, be subject to the same laws and ethics that may apply to voting members?

The Board of Ed is covered by the city’s code of ethics. State statutes do not address that question, Dugas responded. Committee members have to make sure they are not ​“running contrary to the charter” or city law, he said.

Students who commit ethical violations — for example, lying about their city of residence — likely would be subject to ​“sanctions along the lines of, ​‘Don’t do that again.’” The main worry would be that students would be subject to ​“any monetary penalty,” which he said was unlikely.

Students at an earlier citywide student council meeting asked whether students could lose their seats if they don’t attend a certain number of Board of Ed meetings, said Lyons.

The Board of Ed has no attendance requirement, Harries said. In the past, members who failed to fulfill their commitment to the board voluntarily stepped aside. The committee should come up with a procedure in case of any midyear resignations from the student positions — either a special election or appointment, he said.

Lyons (pictured left) said the committee should also consider giving the spot to the ​“second-highest vote-getter.” Dugas said that would be fine as long as it was consistent with the aldermanic ordinance.

They also asked whether there was a way to allow students to unofficially cast a vote or make a motion. Are they allowed to sit in executive session with the other board members to discuss sensitive personnel or legal issues? Dugas said student members on the Boards of Education in West Haven and Trumbull do not participate in executive sessions. He said it would be ​“inappropriate” to have students weigh in on personnel or legal issues.

But Heerema disagreed. ​“I find young people are full of candor in a way that would be refreshing,” she said. She said she wants the position to mirror the adult board positions as closely as possible.

Harries said it would be easy for the Board of Ed to allow students to vote or make a motion. ​“It would be easy for us to say that a board member can make a motion on behalf of the student,” he said.

Dugas said he will return with firmer responses to the questions brought up at the meeting.

Committee members also made plans to make a short video explaining the election process and the role of the Board of Ed for students still considering running, as well as a brief document of ​“frequently asked questions.”

Past coverage:
• 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?