Election 2023: NewCanaanite.com Endorsements for Board of Education 

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We thank all candidates for the Board of Education for running—an act of generosity and care for the community that, sadly, is met at times with ignorance and vitriol.

The following appears in the state statute that establishes Boards of Education in Connecticut towns (Sec. 10-221):

“Each local and regional board of education shall develop, adopt and implement written policies and procedures to encourage parent-teacher communication. These policies and procedures may include monthly newsletters, required regular contact with all parents, flexible parent-teacher conferences, drop-in hours for parents, home visits and the use of technology such as homework hot lines to allow parents to check on their children’s assignments and students to receive assistance if needed. Such policies and procedures shall require the district to conduct two flexible parent-teacher conferences for each school year.”

That’s 87 words within a 790-word section on Board of Ed procedures. And they’re in one of 170 sections within the 182,199-word statute. The rest of it describes the Board of Ed’s responsibilities, including but not limited to training, transportation, safety, records transfers, GPA, graduation, cafeteria food, curriculum, enrollment, school climate, bullying, athletics, social-emotional learning, contracts, state reporting, textbooks, college prep, ventilation, suspensions, facilities, expulsions, mobile devices, salaries, pesticides, activity funds, assessments and accreditation. 

The following section appears in the 237-page New Canaan Board of Education Policies (page 54): 

“The superintendent and the administrative staff shall, in consultation with the board of education, create and maintain appropriate groups such as committees and councils to: Foster effective communications with the staff, students, and the public. Allow staff, students, and the public a voice in decisions affecting them. Establish effective channels of communication for the public, the students and the staff.”

Board of Ed members attend and participate in regular, special and committee meetings as well as executive sessions, receiving and processing heaps of written material, presentations and public comments in-person and via email, text and phone. They work with the administration to oversee and periodically review and update policies, and pepper administrators, faculty and staff with questions in order to understand the financial, educational and other implications of the district’s wide-ranging program for New Canaan students. The chair of the Board of Ed is in constant communication with New Canaan’s superintendent. After the budget is drafted by Dr. Bryan Luizzi and his team, Board of Ed members review and adjust the proposed spending plan, then advocate for it before New Canaan’s funding bodies—a process that has grown more open and collegial under Luizzi, and a duty again carried out well this year by Board of Ed Chair Katrina Parkhill and now-Vice Chair Phil Hogan, among others.

It’s a long, steep learning curve that never fully straightens out. 

As with any public body, open communication with the taxpaying public is written into its responsibilities. (In New Canaan, the Board of Ed convened a Communications Committee about 10 years ago.) The word ‘parent’ appears 262 times in the district policies. By design and practice—and with decades of top-performing results—parents already are active participants in New Canaan’s public schools. The first 41 pages of the district’s policies are labeled “Community Relations”—including an entire section on handling “Public Complaints About Conduct of Schools” (page 9). Here’s an excerpt from that section:

“When Board members are approached directly by persons with concerns or complaints, they should direct the complainant to meet with the individual at the most immediate level, be it teacher, principal or other staff member, preferably face to face at a scheduled meeting.”

In other words, the actual job of a Board of Ed member when such concerns arise is to make a referral to a professional educator. Serving as a fixed proxy or liaison between the district and parents is not the Board of Ed’s role. The words ‘liaison,’ ‘liaise’ and ‘liaising’ don’t appear in the enabling statute or district policies. Because that’s not the job.

After seeing five new members elected to it in 2021, then losing one of those to a resignation, the Board of Ed stands to lose even more on-the-job knowledge this fall with the departures of Parkhill and BOE member Bob Naughton. 

We believe that experience in the Board of Ed role is key for the elected body to function well at this time, so we’re endorsing both incumbents in their contested races: Republican Hugo Alves (two-year seat) and Democrat Brendan Hayes (four-year).

Alves joined the Board of Ed two years ago. Out of 10 total candidates in 2021, he was the top overall vote-getter. Though he arrived as part of a slate, Alves hasn’t always sided with his fellow Republicans. Without dominating any one discussion, he’s an active listener and participant at Board of Ed meetings, and his observation in our podcast that there’s already significant behind-the-scenes exemption work that Luizzi and the administration do to ensure New Canaan schools are autonomous was refreshingly candid during a campaign season muddled by misinformation.

Hayes is a two-term incumbent with a stint as chair under his belt. He is a steady and reasonable voice who, like Alves, appears to us to separate himself from political considerations in serving on the Board of Ed. During the League of Women Voters debate, Hayes stood alone in responding both fully and correctly, in our opinion, to a question about reading materials in the schools—not surprisingly, he did so by referring to the Board of Ed’s actual role. We also liked his timely response on how to settle divisions between parents and educators: “What’s important, as well, is that we don’t just listen to some subset of the community.”

In new members of the Board of Ed we are seeking one attribute: Nonpartisanship.

We’re tired of the party politicking. The whole town is. 

We don’t want to see Board of Ed members wearing party uniforms and we don’t want to watch national party disputes play out at Board of Ed meetings. 

While it’s true that New Canaan isn’t alone in this challenge, it’s also true that New Canaan is different from other towns. This is a small, tight-knit community where residents give of themselves to service organizations, nonprofits, church groups, youth sports teams and municipal boards and commissions, wearing different hats alongside their neighbors. In those relationships, we wouldn’t expect an arbitrary difference of party affiliation to matter any more than baseball fandom.

Trolling has no place here.

Though it started out better than 2021, this election season sadly has again turned toxic, with misinformation campaigns launched by unnamed people using Instagram and Constant Contact, among other channels. New Canaan is better than that—its schoolchildren and parents deserve better. 

In our view, the new four-year candidates best positioned to serve with incumbents on the Board of Ed are, in alphabetical order, Matt Campbell, Lauren Connolly Nussbaum and Giacomo Landi:

  • Campbell is unquestionably a future leader of this Board. We strongly endorse his candidacy. A nimble-minded, philosophical and independent thinker, we think Campbell is a breath of fresh air for a Board that can get bogged down at times and sometimes handles sensitive topics by speaking in code. We understand that Campbell will bring strong opinions to the school board, but we do not find him partisan—we find him reflective, candid and engaged, and believe that he will not only brook good ideas from fellow BOE members, but will also climb the elected body’s learning curve as quickly as anyone. We find Campbell’s repeated assertion that there’s such a thing as “objective truth” refreshing in itself, and credit him for articulating what clearly has been painful and targeted opposition to his candidacy during last week’s debate.
  • Connolly Nussbaum’s call during the same debate for New Canaanites to begin trusting each other and their school administrators again was timely and insightful. We are perhaps even more impressed by her ability to articulate such a sensible goal in the wake of the vicious trolling she has undergone this election season. Connolly Nussbaum is the only candidate who spoke directly during our podcasts to not just her willingness, but her eagerness to collaborate with all Board of Ed members. Her track record in service to New Canaan is extensive, she has been a fixture at Board of Ed meetings for years and stood out to us at the debate as best-informed about the district’s goings-on. Her note on how an expansion of the prized Literary Academy could help solve for out-of-district placements was also timely. Her candidacy is an opportunity for this community. Connolly Nussbaum belongs on the Board of Ed.
  • Landi has the steepest hill to climb this year as an unaffiliated candidate with no organization behind him. His campaign is, by definition, nonpartisan. In our Q&A and podcast with Landi, he voiced what we judge to be moderate and reasonable views on how the Board of Ed should work with the administration, and we like that his priorities include notes on the district’s pre-K program and sports as well as expected responses such as educational excellence and cost control. School boards should be “as non-partisan as possible and really be about education, kids, families, and the community the school serves,” Landi told us this summer. “New Canaan is full of independent thinkers and perhaps this year we will elect a person to the Board of Education not affiliated with a political party.” We hope so, and we believe Landi could help re-center this Board.

Our preference on which candidates best fit the Board of Ed right now doesn’t mean we think others are unworthy or especially partisan in some way—only that their fellow candidates are better fits for the school board right now.

In fact, Democrat Josh Kaye (running for a two-year term) and Republicans Lara Kelly and Matt Wexler (four-year) each bring unique abilities and valuable perspectives. For example, Kaye is an attorney—to our knowledge, the only lawyer on the Board currently is Penny Rashin—who, though he’s new, appears already to grasp the Board of Ed’s role and who clearly would get up to speed quickly. We believe he already is a valuable asset to New Canaan as an Ethics Board member, and hope that even if Kaye doesn’t prevail next week, he continues to seek appointed or elected office here. Kelly is a passionate, articulate and sincere advocate for students and parents who has been communicating with the Board of Education and attending their meetings since at least the early part of the pandemic. In preparing for our podcast series with Board of Ed candidates, we FOI’d all emails from non-incumbents to the group BOE email address since November 2021, and found that Kelly—like Campbell, Connolly Nussbaum and Landi—had been in contact with the school board long before this campaign season, demonstrating a longstanding commitment to it (only Kaye and Wexler had not sent any emails to the group BOE address in the past two years). Wexler, if elected, would be the only New Canaan Public Schools alum to sit on the Board of Ed, and the first since Jennifer Richardson in 2021, bringing a unique and valuable perspective to the role.

Yet Alves, Hayes, Campbell, Connolly Nussbaum and Landi are better fits for what the job needs right now, in our opinion. We don’t think a person can sincerely point to New Canaan’s special uniqueness while trying to overlay a nonlocal agenda. We think a claim that New Canaan Public Schools has benefitted specifically from Republican leadership would ring false to the very GOPers who helped get us here.

More than that, we believe that the only way this election will serve New Canaan is if voters educate themselves on the Board of Ed job and the candidates, then get to the polls on Tuesday. Please look out for our voter guide in the Nov. 7 newsletter. 

Here are some source materials on Board of Ed candidates:

Two-year BOE race (one open seat)

Four-year BOE race (four open seats)

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