Four vie for two seats on board

Police officers in schools a key issue ahead of election

The recent 4-3 vote by the Board of Education to bring in more community engagement police officers and the oft-mentioned diversity, equity and inclusion programs have emerged as two pivotal issues in a fourway race for two open board seats in Tuesday’s election.

Earlier this week, Cathy Lewis, who has 12 years on the board and is its president, joined Kristen Holler and Emily Willey-aulet, who are campaigning together, for a Zoom forum sponsored by the Schenectady chapter of the NAACP. (Ann Reilly is not seeking re-election.)

The running mates talked about the necessity of making local people and grassroots community groups an integral part of what the district does.

Vivian Parsons, who couldn’t make it to Monday’s online discussion, spoke with the Times Union about her stance on a variety of topics. Parsons, a product of Schenectady schools, said she made up her mind to enter the race after seeing how politicized the debate on police in schools became.

She said the district needs to focus more on improving its lackluster graduation rates and offering more programs and services to students with learning disabilities and special needs like her youngest son. She supports the community engagement officer concept, citing the violence and “destructive behavior” that ruined her daughter’s high school years and threatened to do the same for her son in middle school before she pulled him out of the district.

He’s now a freshman at a private school. Her daughter graduated last year and her youngest son is an elementary school student in Schenectady.

“What I saw from the opposition was a refusal to even acknowledge that there was even a problem, and then a refusal to come up with a solution that actually makes sense,” said Parsons.

Parsons, a registered Republican who ran for City Council, said she puts “policy and principle over politics and party.”

Lewis said she voted for the community engagement officer program “based on the recommendations from the staff and based on the survey.”

“As I said it’s controversial, I think we should give it a try to see how it works, we’ve been very careful in the selection of police officers and giving them training in trauma sensitivity and many other aspects of de-escalation and mediation and so on and I believe those are positives,” added Lewis, who is retired from General Electric and cited her background in finances as an asset.

Holler and Willey-aulet, who both went through the Schenectady school system, see things differently.

“I felt as though everything that I read and heard, there wasn’t a clear definition of how much of the activities of the officers were related to enforcement of code of conduct, school safety, or local law and how much of it was about engagement and community building among students,” added Holler, who has two boys in elementary school.

Willey-aulet said “this discussion needed to be a bigger discussion for a later time, and not a political move for the school board and everybody else’s politics because they’re leaving out the children and their voice.”

She and Holler wondered out loud about all the fuss and bluster around diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I will ardently fight the stereotype or misconception that diversity, equity, and inclusion, professional development programming, and adopting anti-racist curriculum and anti-racist practices ... only benefits some and not others,” said Holler, adding DEI “benefits all of us. I also believe that supporting our students early and often as well as including the family in the school environment will go a long way to making students feel engaged and supported to achieve those higher graduation rates ... as well as to students returning to Schenectady when they do graduate.”

Lewis contends that “diversity is a fact, equity and inclusion are actions, and that’s what we need to work on is having that inclusive lens for all of our work.”

Parsons, the director of admissions for an assisted living facility, cautioned that the district needs to realize that DEI “is not exclusive to race, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation, it’s also indicative of variety of thought.”

Willey-aulet, the founder of a community youth outreach program, advocated for the school district to work more closely with grassroots communitybased groups as a way of helping students better cope with trauma and hire from within the city to achieve a workforce that reflects the school system’s diverse student population.

“If we do not meet the needs of every family in our district regardless of who they worship, what the tone of their skin is, who they decided to vote for or not vote for, then we are doing them an injustice,” said Willey-aulet.

The four women all agreed the district needs to boost its lackluster graduation rates, hire more staff ranging from teachers to paraprofessionals to psychologists and social workers, some of which is in the 2022-23 budget, and they all expressed optimism about the community school model that the superintendent has said he hopes to launch by the end of the year.

Lewis said she would like to see the state foundation aid windfall coming to the district go toward ongoing building improvement projects and more staff.

Holler said her wish list would include funding afterschool and summer enrichment programs for the youngest students and bringing school buildings up to snuff.

“I really hope to bring my nonprofit experience, my mentoring and coaching experience, and just my passion for young people, and for thinking about old problems in new ways, and bringing a fresh perspective to this board of education, and really helping to bring consensus around how we’re going to achieve that,” she said.

Besides the school board races Tuesday, voters will decide on the proposed $239.3 million budget and a proposition to create a capital reserve fund for general building improvements, construction, renovations or additions on an as-needed basis.

The fund would not surpass $5 million and the board would determine how much funding would be deposited into the account each year, and the fund would last 5 years.

Polls are open from noon to 9 p.m.