Candidates lay out ways to improve what some say is ‘dysfunctional’ school board
STAMFORD — The Stamford Board of Education has a number of challenges to face, including finding ways to get along.
Some of the candidates vying for one of the three open spots on the board in the upcoming Nov. 2 election said they would help restore professionalism and order to the body, which has often been disrupted by board member arguments.
Board member behavior has come under fire this year; a 60-page report by an outside law firm addressed allegations of bullying and harassment by board members against members of Superintendent Tamu Lucero’s cabinet.
Democratic candidate Michael Hyman, a
staff member at the Stamford nonprofit Domus and former Stamford NAACP president, said one of the main reasons he chose to run was to help improve board relations.
He called out some board members, without naming names, for coming to meetings unprepared, not reading board material and asking uninformed questions.
“I am truly disappointed as a resident, as a taxpayer in this town, and everyone should be, on the behavior that the current board has shown us,” he said, during a candidate forum hosted by University of Connecticut-Stamford Politics Club Tuesday night at Ferguson Library. “It is not a proud moment in Stamford when our elected officials yell and scream at one another.”
Republican candidate Josh Esses, a lawyer, said he would help restore professionalism, productivity and preparedness to meetings if elected.
“I will be reading the board packet before the Board of Education meetings and asking questions at the meetings that are pertinent to the matters being discussed,” he said.
The event was an opportunity for students at the school to ask candidates questions. Many of them focused on diversity and inclusion and ways to make schools more equitable.
Almost all of the candidates said the district needs to do a better job retaining teachers of color.
Incumbent board member Jackie Pioli, a community and parent activist who is running as an unaffiliated candidate, said the district does have programs that address hiring diverse teachers but she’s more concerned about retention.
“We can keep hiring diverse teachers, administrators and other support staff, but why are they leaving our district?” she asked.
Candidate Versha Munshi-South, a former teacher
and principal at Public Preparatory Network in Manhattan who is running as a Democrat, said she would like to see the district conduct exit interviews for teachers leaving the district to learn more about what can be done to keep them from leaving.
On the question of promoting diversity and inclusion, Republican candidate Joe Gonzalez, a former Stamford Police officer, said the district doesn’t have to promote either, touting the vast number of languages spoken in the district and its current diversity.
He said work could be done, however, with increasing the diversity of the teaching staff, which remains predominantly white, even though Latinos make up the largest ethnic group in the district.
Esses suggested providing rental assistance to Stamford teachers to attract candidates and keep them in the system once hired. He also proposed adjusting the pay structure of educators to provide higher compensation for “better” teachers and lower salaries for “worse” teachers.
Some of the candidates mentioned the district’s communications as something they would work to improve.
Republican candidate Becky Hamman, an incumbent, said the district has not allowed parents’ voices in the decision-making process.
“We need parents involved,” she said.
Parents have reported feeling blindsided by a
number of recent policy changes, such as the decision to eliminate tracking at middle schools, eliminating some Advanced Placement classes at Stamford High School and implementing a new grading policy at Westhill High School.
“The way they’ve been communicated and a lack of family engagement has resulted in a lot of push back from families or just frankly misunderstanding,” Munshi-South said.
Both Gonzalez and Hamman said the board needs to be more transparent.
“It seems like the Board of Education with the superintendent isn’t very welcoming to the parents,” Gonzalez said.
Hamman said she would continue to fight for transparency and “keep the board honest.” She claimed that a group of board members operate behind closed doors.
Hamman also advocated for returning to in-person board meetings, something that has not happened since early 2020.
Munshi-South, a former classroom teacher, said the curriculum in Stamford is “embarrassingly outdated” and supported the district’s ongoing curriculum audit.
“We need board members who understand what different curriculum is out there, what’s most effective, what we know doesn’t work and what would work with our unique population of students,” she said.
Democratic candidate Ben Lee, a current member of the Stamford Board of Representatives, said the district should embrace its recently approved diversity and inclusion policy.
During the forum, he brought up Critical Race Theory, making him the first candidate to reference the concept in any of the three forums.
A handful of parents have spoken at Board of Education meetings this year claiming that Stamford schools are teaching CRT, though no evidence has emerged that the theory is in fact being taught in classrooms. CRT is an academic concept that originated in the 1970s as a way for college students to examine history through a racial lens and opponents of it have alleged that the framework is an anti-American, political ideology.
Lee called the criticism “nonsense.”
“We have to boldly defend our values,” he said. “We cannot be bullied by the loudest people in the room who want to deny the inequities that have grown in our country, some of the inequities within our history and the inequities in outcomes that do exist.”
Hyman also addressed CRT.
“I would ask anyone to talk to any teacher who has graduated and to find out anywhere on their college transcript they actually took a course in the pedagogy of Critical Race Theory so that they could teach it to their students in the school,” he said. “That has not happened. There is no such course.”
The Stamford Board of Education operates under a minority representation rule, which stipulates no more than six of the nine members may belong to the same party. Five Democrats are not up for re-election this year, meaning only one Democrat can join the board through the upcoming election if they finish among the top three overall candidates.
The rule does not stipulate that the minority representation on the board be all Republican. A candidate running as unaffiliated, or any minority party, would also qualify.