During her successful campaign for a seat on the Rochester
School Board last fall, Cynthia Elliott promised to shake things up. She said
the board has been too passive, and she supported mayoral candidate Wade
Norwood, who wanted to have the superintendent report to the mayor instead of
the School Board.
At the board’s organizational meeting last week, Elliott
wasted no time making her mark. She cast the lone vote against electing Domingo
Garcia the new president, saying she wasn’t familiar enough with his record on
the board. Considering that Elliott ran unsuccessfully against Garcia a year
ago, it appeared that that rivalry was continuing.
If that’s the case, the timing isn’t good. With a new
president, two new board members, and a vacancy yet to be filled, the board
needs to come together quickly to guide several extremely important programs.
The Children’s Zone is moving from concept into development, and while it’s an
ambitious project, thousands of children and their families could benefit from
it. Even more time-sensitive is the district’s plan to modernize many of its
buildings. Hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid could be lost if the
district doesn’t get its application into Albany
by June. Before then, it must firm up the plan and get the community behind it.
Garcia says he expected Elliott’s “no” vote and wasn’t
offended by it. Elliott says her concerns were based on her experience with
Garcia during the 2004 Democratic primary, when she was the party’s nominee and
Domingo successfully challenged her. “Why couldn’t he have gotten behind me as
the nominated candidate?” she says. “My concern was more about his ethics.”
“I don’t really know what he has done on the board to
deserve the position,” she says. “I have not worked with him. I had nothing to
base a ‘yes’ vote on. And my earlier experience with him left me suspicious.”
Elliott, who will likely be one of the School Board’s bolder
members, isn’t afraid to speak up or seek greater clarity. On Monday, in a
meeting between the board and City Council, she came out against Superintendent
Manuel Rivera directing the Children’s Zone.
“I think the school district needs to stay in the business
of education and not go into the business of human services,” she said. “I
think the city is in a better position to lead the Children’s Zone. We don’t
seem to have the intimate relationships with the agencies in the community to
be successful.”
Elliott also says her first few meetings with the board have
been just as she expected: inefficient. At last week’s meeting, when the board
began to go through the evening’s agenda, Elliott asked for more information on
several items she was expected to vote on. She couldn’t make an intelligent
decision, she said, since she had not seen enough supportive documentation, and
what she did receive didn’t get to her in a timely manner.
Garcia says he understands Elliott’s concerns, since it was
her first meeting and she was entering into some of the board’s business
mid-stream.
But Elliott says she’s not the only person who’s unhappy:
much of the public feels disconnected from the district, she says, because the
district doesn’t do a good job communicating. And City Council member Adam
McFadden, who attended last week’s board meeting, says Elliott was asking the
right questions.
“She has a valid point,” he said later. “I don’t know how
they go through all the information that they have to go through with due
diligence to cast their votes.” The board, he said, has only one staff person
assisting them. City Council has a six or seven-member staff, “and then each
Council member has an aide,” said McFadden. “There’s no other way to read
through all this information. I think the comments she made were very timely.”
Elliott’s aggressiveness this early on, however, may raise a
question: will it result in a stronger board, or a weaker, fractured one?
Malik Evans, who was elected vice president at last week’s
board meeting, says he recognizes the importance of a smooth transition. “We’re
all entitled to our opinions,” he said, “but we have to find common ground,
too, or nothing will get done.”
“I’m not concerned about Cynthia’s comments,” he said. “I
think she understands that we have to work together. The bottom line for every
new member is learning to count to four. It takes four votes to get anything
done on the board. You can’t just sit back and criticize. You have to learn how
to build consensus to be effective.”
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2006.
