Conservative Activists Lose Ground on Local Education Panel, But Remain Strong Citywide
While the recent Mayoral and City Council primary elections attracted record turnout (along with non-stop media attention), a second set of races centered around public schools was almost entirely ignored, both by voters and the press – but nonetheless may shed light on public sentiment.
Elections to the Community Education Council (CEC) for District 2, which includes Lower Manhattan, as well as the East Side south of 97th Street (with the exception of the Lower East Side) and the West Side south of 59th Street, handed a rebuke to a faction of conservative activists who have stirred controversy for more than a year. This group has pushed resolutions opposing the participation of transgender students in school sports, against offering the admissions test for specialized high schools in languages other than English, and refusing to disavow links to alleged extremist groups.
Unseated from the CEC for District 2 were five of the seven candidates who were allied with this faction. Four of these were endorsed by Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE), a group that has helped to make New York’s CECs a local venue for culture war skirmishes, mirroring similar battles at school boards around the nation. The fifth candidate who was not reelected, Lower Manhattan resident Maud Maron, is closely aligned with the positions of the group. (Ms. Maron is also the Republican candidate for Manhattan District Attorney.) In the District 2 CEC race overall, only four of the 12-member panel’s incumbents were returned to their seats. Three of these four were supported by PLACE.
PLACE also backs CEC candidates throughout the City. And while the group’s slate underperformed in District 2, more than half of its preferred candidates in other districts were elected, and will now comprise almost a third of all CEC seats, spread across the Councils for 32 districts around the five boroughs.
While passions surrounding CECs run high, however, public engagement is falling off. Fewer than 19,000 eligible voters participated in Council elections citywide this year, out of an eligible pool of more than 900,000. This translates into a participation rate of around 2.1 percent.
According to the Department of Education (DOE), the last round of CEC elections (in 2023) cost more than $4 million, and drew fewer than 20,000 voters, meaning that each vote cost more than $200. This year’s CEC elections were plagued by technical glitches, with some candidates missing from ballots, while the names of others appeared under races in which they were not running. This caused CEC voting (which is conducted online, over multiple days) to be “paused” while the errors were fixed. In the wake of the recent election, multiple parents organizations have called for an investigation into DOE’s handling of CEC elections.