Why I supported Pioli for BOE
If Ms. Pioli was the source of all chaos, then upon her departure, things would’ve gotten better, except the exact opposite happened. Things got worse. Much worse.
Many members of the public might want to know why I supported Jackie Pioli for the vacancy on the Stamford Board of Education that came about due to Ben Lee’s resignation, when my party, the Democratic Party, asked me to support another candidate. The teacher’s union president, John Corcoran, asked me to. I asked Corcoran if the union would consider a less controversial candidate. Mr. Corcoran said he couldn’t think of a better person for the position than Jackie. On top of that, community activists, parents, and educators also asked me to support her. Ms. Pioli has a massive following of supporters, more so than I ever realized until having put her name forward for the vacancy.
According to the city charter, the Board of Representatives is tasked with filling vacancies within 60 days. While it is customary to go with the political party’s recommendation, the recommendation is not binding. In 2011, 2015, and 2019, the RTC expressed support for one candidate and the Republicans on the BOR wanted another one. As such, precedent existed for putting forward another candidate different from the DCC’s pick.
Much of the talk about this vacancy was not about children or what’s best educationally for our community. Much of it was about trying to browbeat people into following the party line. Moreover, Ms. Pioli has been used as a scapegoat for a variety of problems. She has been blamed on the breakdown between the Board of Education, the superintendent/central office, and the teachers. However, the true breakdown was due to COVID, and a chaotic, rapidly changing situation.
During the early days of COVID, I got requests for help from some members of the Board of Education. They felt I was better able to get information out of the superintendent than they were. However, given the rapidly changing guidelines during the pandemic, the last person you talked to coould be the most informed. If Ms. Pioli was the source of all chaos, then upon her departure, things would’ve gotten better, except the exact opposite happened. Things got worse. Much worse. Votes of “no confidence” in the superintendent were happening in school after school after school. Members of the teacher’s union are concerned that certain Board of Education members will support the superintendent so doggedly that they impede her from improving, and impede her from collaborating effectively with administrators and teachers. Ms. Pioli has also been blamed singlehandedly for closing Trailblazers and Stamford Academies because she was able to convince the BOE to make a minor cut to their budget. Again, these schools were having consistent issues with low performance and loss of support from independent backers that had nothing to do with Ms. Pioli.
What seems to have been overlooked is Ms. Pioli’s list of accomplishments, which are rather impressive. Ms. Pioli has consistently called for looking at the efficacy of programs using data. She worked to create a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy. She asked to see demographic data in AP classes, and said that if we want more diversity in these classes, then we need to be giving kids more support on the elementary and middle school levels. She successfully advocated for reading specialists in grades 6-12. She raised the academic standards for student athletes. The list of her accomplishments goes on and on and on. One of her detractors, apparently unaware that Ms. Pioli had worked to create the DEI policy, wrote an Op-Ed to celebrate it.
Lastly, I hope that, in spite of this very heated battle, that all this talk about the Board of Education encourages others to be active and engaged in a positive way. Our schools need a lot of support and we need more people to be paying attention.