Vote For Me — Or At Least Please Vote

At a campaign event replete with free doughnuts and dancing to the Cupid Shuffle, a candidate for New Haven’s school board wanted voters to know her plans for reforming secondary education — and, just as importantly, that an election is taking place at all.

Sound School’s Kimberly Sullivan held the campaign event Tuesday afternoon at New Light High School.

This small, casual gathering at New Light High School in Wooster Square constituted the first individual campaign event in the citywide election of two public high school students to serve in a non-voting capacity on the newly-restructured Board of Education. Consolidating her core support base, the event brought together about a dozen students from Sound, Co-Op, Metro and New Light at the small school in Wooster Square.

If elected, Sullivan will join the new hybrid board created in a 2013 charter revision referendum. Citywide elections take place Thursday and Friday morning in all ten public high schools. Each high school student will be able to vote at his or her own school Thursday and Friday morning, with the help of a school-based election coordinator. The election committee will count the votes by hand at 3 p.m. Friday. Students will vote for one of four rising seniors for one seat, and one of two rising juniors for the second. It is the first-ever election for students to the school board.

Not a lot people know about that. As became clear at Tuesday’s event.

Sullivan, who has been attending Board of Ed meetings as an observer (often speaking up at the podium), maintained that the primary goal of her campaign is to inform students of the election itself, an uphill battle due to the short timeline of the election process, which began just over a month ago. (Click here to read about an event where all candidates made their case.)

“Whether they vote for me or not, I want students to show up to the polls and make their voices heard,” she said. ​“That’s more important than me being on the board.”

Her peers at the event concurred that they have learned about the election more from the student candidates themselves than administrative channels of communication such as morning announcements.

Earl Givan, another rising senior at Sound, said Sullivan and her friends have been working diligently to spread the word at Sound and elsewhere.

“The election was kind of a surprise, and could have been presented to students better and earlier,” he said. ​“The advertising should have been more in-your-face, I think.”

Lenessa Cabrera, a rising junior at Metro, said she would not have heard of the election had Sullivan’s campaign not been so active at her school.

Sullivan’s attempts to spread the word at other schools have had mixed results. While some schools such as Co-Op and Common Ground have been welcoming and accommodating, others have been less responsive or unable to fit her into their schedules, busy with standardized testing and final exams, she said.

Another candidate, Jesus Garzon, a rising senior at Metro, has faced similar issues with students at other schools not being informed about the upcoming election. He has been visiting other schools informally during after-school programs and hosting meet-and-greets on the Lower Green to hear the range of issues different students care about, such as the poor quality of school lunch.

He has also been reaching students from other schools through his close relationships with the two candidates running for the rising junior position on the BOE.

Jose Ayala, a rising junior at Co-Op High School, said that he supports Sullivan because she has been the most organized of the candidates, evidenced by the fact that she held the event. He said the candidate from his school has not been a large presence and as a result many students do not know about the election.

“The election is important because the [Board of Education] hasn’t done things like improve school lunch because there are no students on it, who have experienced what’s going on,” he said.

At the event, Sullivan (pictured) discussed her plans to advise the Board of Education on ensuring post-graduation success for students not interested in academics. She said that with the huge emphasis the school district places on college admissions, many students do not get support or advice on pursuing other vocational or training programs.

For Dar’ron Brown, who graduated from Metro last year and has been aiding Sullivan’s campaign, this platform ​“hits home.” After a semester at Gateway, he realized that college wasn’t his path to success, and didn’t feel like there were any other options. He was excited to find an 11-month medical assistant certification program that will bring him a step closer to his goal of becoming an EMT.

“Not everyone wants to go to college, and the schools aren’t encouraging vocations because the Board of Education doesn’t recognize that, since they’re so focused on college,” he said. ​“There’s this idea that either you’re in college or you’re failing, and [Sullivan] wants to show people that there’s another way.”

Meanwhile, Garzon, one of two Metro students facing off in the election, is running on the promise that he will advocate for under-resourced schools serving low-income and at-risk students such as New Horizons.

“It hurts to say, but New Horizons is really under-funded and students are dealing with really serious out-of-school problems. I believe in equality and all students should receive the same resources, otherwise the poor get poorer and the rich get richer,” he said.

He said he plans to take full advantage of the abundant resources at Metro in order to have time during his busy senior year to work with the Board to help the city’s students that need the most help.

With the clock ticking down, Garzon is planning one last meet-and-greet on the Lower Green at 3 p.m. Wednesday.