Although
it’s received less attention than City Hall, there’ll be big differences on the
Rochester School Board starting January 1. Newcomers Cynthia Elliott and Tom Brennan
will replace two veterans on the seven-member board: Jim Bowers and Rob Brown.
The board will remain completely Democratic, but that doesn’t guarantee peace.
There’ve been no big, public
disputes recently, but the board’s history includes plenty of them, the most
recent in 2002, over the removal of then-Superintendent Clifford Janey. Even in
peaceful times, the board sometimes splits into factions. Retiring board member
Rob Brown, a former Democratic Party chair and a skillful politician, has often
wielded behind-the-scenes power, and a new, similarly strong leader isn’t
apparent.
And while Superintendent Manuel
Rivera is popular with current board members, newcomer Cynthia Elliott — a
David Gantt supporter — isn’t a fan. Elliott is a strong personality, with
strong opinions. She supported mayoral candidate Wade Norwood’s proposal to put
the mayor in charge of the school district. She has criticized the district for
the size of raises given to teachers and to Rivera, and she says Rivera should
not be taking the lead he’s taking in pushing for his Children’s Zone concept.
(Newcomer Tom Brennan is less
critical of the district.)
Critics of the school district often
change once they become School Board members, however. “If you look back
on the history of the board,” says board member Willa Powell, “candidates
invariably get elected on the reform rhetoric. They decry the budget process
and say we should be able to trim here and there, and ‘money is surely being
spent that shouldn’t be.’ And they decry the testing results and the graduation
results, and that teachers are not doing their jobs and the district can’t
educate children and so on.”
“But that
is classic outsider and uninformed rhetoric,” says Powell. “Once they go
through the budget process and once they go through a full year of testing and
see the results, they become an insider that is informed. Most have become,
through that experience, advocates of the district, because they see how
extremely hard the district has it, and how much harder it is for us to get
these children where they need to be in terms of their test scores.”
And, says
board member Malik Evans, new board members learn that they are only one
person. “They will have their vision of what they would like to implement,”
says Evans, “but they learn right away that you have to learn how to count to
four. It takes four votes to get anything done, to make any changes. One person
is not going to make changes without three others voting in like mind.”
“And you
have to remember that the political process is very different from the
governing process,” says Evans. “I don’t have to like the other board members
and be friends with each of them, but I do have to respect them and know that
we are all there for one reason only, and that is to help these children.”
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2005.
