Second round of voting concluded May 25 after first vote was invalidated
President Sam Pirozzolo stood for re-election.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The head of Staten Island's Community Education Council 31 called the recent voting to elect new CEC members citywide a "fiasco," and said the Department of Education should have already released the names of the winners here because no run-off was involved.
CEC President Sam Pirozzolo also said poor communication with parents on the part of the DOE resulted in an abysmal turnout.
Sam Pirozzolo is president of the Community Education CouncilSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With 1 million students citywide, reportedly only around 5,000 parents voted.
"It's a sham and a shame," said Sam Pirozzolo, a public school parent of two from Westerleigh who sought re-election. A DOE spokeswoman said she was unable to immediately provide the results of the borough's election because they are not yet considered final. She said the results could be released as early as today.
The spokeswoman, Deidrea Miller, did not respond to further inquiries, including the number of Island public school parents who voted and how many were eligible to vote.
An initial round of voting in early May was invalidated by Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott after he conceded the DOE "should have done a better job managing" the elections to ensure that they were "fair to the parents."
The second round of voting concluded May 25.
Critics had charged that parents were unaware of the election, that parents seeking to run were told they were ineligible for a variety of reasons and that the DOE didn't do enough to recruit parents to run.
Voting was done online.
"There was no general outreach to the population of PTAs," said Pirozzolo. "Mistakes were made, of who can serve and who can't serve. We should be well beyond the mistakes."
This after the initial elections were postponed "because DOE forgot to ask the [city] comptroller's office for funding to run it," charged Pirozzolo. "You would think if this was important to them, the DOE wouldn't have forgotten to put a line item in the budget to fund the elections."
Pirozzolo said one Island candidate was initially told -- incorrectly -- that she was ineligible to run, and another candidate, who has children in more than one school, also had his eligibility questioned.
That could not be immediately independently confirmed.
"They make up the rules as they go along," Pirozzolo said of the DOE. "There are different standards."
Eleven Islanders ran for nine open CEC slots. An additional two Islanders are appointed by the borough president to the 11-member CEC. The terms are two years.
New terms begin July 1.
CECs help shape educational policy in their districts.