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Newark voters head to the polls on April 21 to elect four members to the city’s Board of Education, which makes key decisions for New Jersey’s largest school district.
But what does the community want those new board members to prioritize once they take their seats?
At a debate last month, the nine candidates vying for four seats pledged to tackle several issues, including fixing aging school buildings; expanding student mental health resources; improving transparency; and including parents, teachers, and students in district decisions.
This year’s school board race is the second time the city’s 16- and 17-year-olds will cast their vote in the election. Last year, only 73 teens voted in the April election despite targeted efforts to get the city’s more than 7,000 eligible youth voters to the polls.
Chalkbeat asked parents, students, teachers, and advocates the same question: What should the new board focus on first?
Their answers touch on some of the most pressing challenges for the district, which serves more than 41,000 students across 65 schools and will run on a $1.6 billion budget next school year. Nearly six years after regaining local control of schools, community members say they still want more input in decisions that shape education in Newark.
Here’s what members of the city’s education community told Chalkbeat what they want to see from the incoming school board members. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Emmanuel Adeola
Junior at Bard High School Early College
Get student feedback
“Students are the school district’s consumers. It makes sense to want to get student feedback because it’s just requiring that you listen to our concerns. And also, there has to be a better way to talk to students. I know sometimes students may not want to listen to adults, but a lot of us can vote now, so how can board members help us understand what’s happening and also listen to us?”
John Abeigon
President of the Newark Teachers Union
Boost teacher collaboration with principals and district leaders
“What I would be hoping to get from whoever the new elected board members are, is that we continue to work towards strengthening the collaboration that we’re already creating between teachers and the public school district. We want teachers to be the ones creating the instruction happening in classrooms. Unified instruction, unified learning, unified teaching.”
Alexander Schuetz
Chair of the Newark Education Workers Caucus
More investment in student needs
“We’re an enormous district with a really wide variety of needs. We are really leaning in both words and in cash into the top performing students. We are building these hyper-specialized high schools. We are building evermore, it seems, gifted and talented approaches and internship opportunities, which I don’t have any problem with, of course. But I do not see that same energy being put into our students with the most needs.”
“Our students whether they have a disability or not, or come from another country, so many of our students are just on the back foot from the start, based on the resources they have access to. I would like to see a board that can sort of pause in this victory lap of expansion and take a look at the larger masses of students who feel like they’re being left behind.”
Debra Smith-Gregory
President of the NAACP Newark
Holding the superintendent accountable
“I want the incoming school board members to work with the current board members to ensure that the best interests of students are put first and that means holding the superintendent accountable for his decisions. I think a prime example is their intent to spend nearly $500 million leasing a building for young people in the East Ward, a building the district will not own until after 30-years. Board members should be asking questions about that.”
Inés Aguilera
East Ward mom of a third grader at Hawkins Street Elementary School (translated from Spanish)
Fix school lunches
“My daughter tells me she doesn’t have enough time to eat her lunch. Sometimes she brings home the entire lunch I packed for her, or sometimes with only a bite into her sandwich. I also think that the quality of school food isn’t good and the fruits are not good, that’s why I pack my daughter’s lunch every day. And it’s also important to make sure that younger students, especially those whose teeth may be growing in, have their fruits cut up for them. Many of them can’t bite into those hard apples.”
Ade’Kamil Kelly
Two-time Newark school board candidate
Transparency and fiscal responsibility
“I really would like the board to focus on fiscal responsibility, especially because we’re looking at a budget that just got approved that cuts 30 teachers. Can we tighten up our fiscal responsibility, because all eyes are literally on Newark right now? And I really hate that we constantly have to have the same conversation year after year about the same fundamental things. Even when you look at how the new, proposed Riverfront Elementary School for the East Ward went before everybody, it wasn’t a transparent process that everyone can feel good about. So it’s just a lot of continuous missed opportunities for the school board to just say things clearly to the public.”
Rafael Chavez
Organizer for New Labor, a Newark-based immigrant rights group
Translation services during Board of Education meetings
“The biggest issue is the lack of translation at board meetings. That’s why some of the parents, actually, maybe most of the parents who don’t speak English don’t really go to those meetings because they don’t understand them. They don’t have a translation there. They throw ridiculous barriers at us, and Spanish-speaking families can’t participate.”
Chesha Hodge
Director, Coalition for Healthy Food in Newark Schools, a Greater Newark Conservancy Initiative
More student involvement in school food decisions
“Students are starting to understand and learn that their voice matters, especially here in Newark, where 16- and 17-year-olds now get to vote in the school board elections. We want to make a way for students to not just have these really basic food conversations, but we also want them to be included in these higher-level conversations that are taking place on the local and state level. Let’s just tap into the power that is our youth right now.”
Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.
