Christopher Peak Photo
Dave Cicarella, after votes were counted at union hall.
Dave Cicarella will remain president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, after winning a revote with a 15-point margin.
Those election results, which were announced at the Chapel Street headquarters on Thursday night, finally set the union’s leadership after the initial December 2018 results were thrown out on a technicality that was caught amid other complaints of election tampering and undue influence that were dismissed.
Cicarella, the five-term incumbent, won 396 votes, while Cameo Thorne, the district’s trainer in restorative practices who challenged him, won 292 votes.
(Tom Burns, another challenger who narrowly lost to Cicarella by two dozen votes in the initial balloting and who brought the complaints to union higher-ups and government regulators, was barred from running again because of allegations that he “extorted” Cicarella.)
Would these results put an end to the discord? “I think so, and I hope so,” Cicarella said. “We need to get it over and done. There’s too much other important stuff to do.”
Cicarella added that he thought the revote “validates” his leadership strategy of choosing private cooperation over public demands. He said it allows teachers to focus on what’s happening in their classrooms, while the union deals with Central Office.
Unlike the outspoken activists who led teachers on recent strikes in Los Angeles and Chicago, Cicarella said he doesn’t want to be “loud” with “over-the-top comments.”
Cicarella said he doesn’t want to bring complaints to the school board too often, because they become easier to “dismiss.” After a while, “nobody listens,” he said, making it “counterproductive.”
He pointed to teachers’ protests in 2015 against Elm City Imagine, then-Superintendent Garth Harries’ plan for New Haven Public Schools and the Achievement First charter network to jointly run a school. he said they shut the idea down, because it was one of the few times board members saw the union mobilize in opposition.
That meant hearing the district administration out next year’s budget cuts, Cicarella said. Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey has proposed hiring a smaller, less experienced teaching force and asking for furlough days to save money.
“I never go and say, ‘We’re not going to talk about it at all.’ We never take that position initially,” Cicarella said of next year’s proposed budget cuts.
“Whether we win or lose, we have to work with them,” he added.
Thorne, who’d argued that the union could accomplish more if it made its case to the public, said the results mean the union will continue with “business as usual.”
She pointed out that nearly two-thirds of the district’s teachers hadn’t returned their ballots, with 183 fewer votes cast this time around. “You’ve got to wake them up,” she said.
Union members also picked Pat DeLucia as executive vice-president, Marc Anthony Solli as executive secretary (who flipped the seat for Cicarella’s slate in the revote), Mike Pantaleo for treasurer, David Low for vice-president of high schools, Judith Leach for vice-president of middle schools, Tracey Paige-Harris for vice-president of elementary schools, and Ray Pompano as vice-president of special services.
The rest of the executive board will include Joe Steele, Toni Criscuolo, Al Meadows, Iris Festa, Reginald Augustine, Michael Soares, Kara Steele-Distante, Erica McDaniel-Epps, Michael Mazzacane, Pamela Stricker, J. Peter Wilson, Jane Roth, and Melody Gallagher.