A teenager, a newcomer, and two incumbents were elected Tuesday to the Rochester Board of Education.
Isaiah Santiago, Jacqueline Griffin, Beatriz LeBron and Amy Maloy won the four seats up for election, which was largely uncontested except for one anomaly.
Ricardo Adams, who conceded to Jacqueline Griffin in the Democratic primary in June, was on the ballot under the Working Families Party line. He said shortly after losing the primary election that he would not be actively campaigning for the general election due to health concerns.
Still, he received about 6% of votes on Tuesday.
The four elected candidates will join longtime school board commissioner Cynthia Elliott, who is in her fifth term on the board, as well as Camille Simmons and James Patterson. Their terms will start in January.
The makeup of the board could lead to some discord. During the primary elections, LeBron and others questioned whether Griffin, whose children attend a charter school, is fit for an elected position overseeing a public school district where part of the budget is diverted into charter schools.
In March, the district transferred $5 million to charter school funding to account for higher enrollment in those schools than anticipated.
Griffin has said that it shouldn’t matter where her children go to school, and concerns with the way the city district is run should be addressed regardless.
“If we don't empower our children, then we're going to have a problem and the crime is not going to stop. We have to give them a voice,” Griffin said on Tuesday. “We have to give them the tools to success, and then we will see a turnaround in everything that's happening in Rochester.”
Griffin said she’s concerned that money in the district is being used in ways that don’t serve students.
“I don't understand why there's so many different principals and all these different administrations within the buildings,” she said. “I think that money should go to social workers, truant officers, guidance counselors. I think that could be lucrative for the kids. I don't think that we need all of that overhead.”
One of the more pressing issues facing the school board this year is the rollout of a school reconfiguration plan. Multiple schools will close, others will be moved, and some buildings will close.
Community responses to the plan have been mixed, and some students — particularly those in high school — are worried about what this means for their education, their future, and their well-being.
Ahead of a school board vote on the reconfiguration plan last month, Superintendent Carmine Peluso announced changes to the original plan to accommodate students with autism and adjust to other concerns raised in community listening sessions.
“This has been a conversation for a number of years with a number of superintendents,” LeBron said. “The problem with rolling it out and implementing it was that there was never a good enough plan. And Rochester is a city that wants change with no changes. And that is difficult to do.”
Santiago and Maloy both see student mental and social wellness as a top priority going forward. Students in the city district often face challenges their peers in suburban districts may not, including exposure to community violence, concentrated poverty, and at times the death and killings of classmates.
“I've lost a lot of friends to violence, and I've seen a lot of even my current friends go through things after graduating through the district,” Santiago said. “Being able to see so many tragedies and so much negativity, I knew that that it was time for me to step up.”
Unofficial results in the race are as follows:
- Amy Maloy, 24.4%
- Beatriz LeBron, 23.9%
- Isaiah Santiago, 24.4%
- Jacqueline Griffin, 20.3%
- Ricardo Adams, 6.3%
