Fighting for a seat at the table

Diversity is central issue in school board elections

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Ali Muldrow sees a glaring problem with the Madison school board — it doesn’t reflect the diversity of its students or the community.

“You don’t want a school board that is over-representative of the wealthiest people in your community, the most privileged people in your community,” Muldrow says. “You want a school board that is representative of all the different walks of life and all the different relationships that people have.”

Muldrow, who is African American, says that diversity goes beyond race, and means having board members who are LGBTQ, immigrants or have experienced poverty. “If those people are missing from the conversation, you lose opportunities to have a more informed dialogue that makes sound, considerate policy decisions,” says Muldrow, who is running for Seat 4, where incumbent James Howard is stepping down.

This spring, three of the board’s seven seats — 3, 4 and 5 — are up for election and two of the incumbents are not running again. Currently two of the board’s seven seats are held by people of color, including Howard and Gloria Reyes, whose term runs until 2021. People of color are running for all three contested seats, putting the issue of race and diversity front and center.

It’s an issue that some of the white candidates, like Cris Carusi who is running for Seat 3, acknowledge. “We’re a majority-minority school district at this point, most of our kids are kids of color, and most of our teachers are not and our school board is not mostly people of color,” Carusi says. “So, while I think you have to consider more than just race when making decisions about staffing and governance, that absolutely needs to be a factor that we’re taking into consideration.”

Ananda Mirilli, who announced her run for school board in tandem with Muldrow, says having leaders of color makes a huge difference in students’ lives. “There is this impact of representation that has an emotional complexity to it, we see that, and we’re like okay, we can visualize ourselves in that space,” says Mirilli, who was born in Brazil.

However, some candidates argue the focus on race is counter-productive. “That school board is uniformly slavish to identity politics, that’s what got us in trouble to begin with,” says David Blaska, a former Dane County supervisor who is running for Seat 4. “How about a different voice on that school board, how about real intellectual diversity, period, end of sentence.”

Amos Roe, running for Seat 5 against incumbent TJ Mertz and Mirilli, agrees that identity politics are problematic. “I’m for diversity more than anybody, but it’s got to be diversity that’s based on merit,” says Roe, who is white. “Trying to take people in on the diversity of their skin versus their competency is the whole problem we have to get beyond.”

Three of the candidates of color running this time have run before: Kaleem Caire in 1998, Mirilli in 2013 and Muldrow in 2017. Muldrow says they faced increased scrutiny because of their race.

When Muldrow first ran, she was criticized for enrolling her children at Isthmus Montessori Academy — a decision she and her partner made after their oldest daughter had a bad experience in 4K. “I don’t want anybody’s kid to go to school and be scared and intimidated and think that they’re not smart,” Muldrow says. “I don’t want that for any child. But when it comes to my own kids, those are the loves of my life, they’re my life purpose, they’re the reason I exist, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to take care of them.”

Both Caire and Mirilli say they were mischaracterized in their first bids for school board, Caire as anti-union and Mirilli as a pro-voucher candidate — characterizations that quickly defined them.

“We’re penalized for trying to do what we can to uplift our children in ways that we know will help them,” Caire says.

“There’s always this feeling that you can never satisfy,” Mirilli says. “It’s like you learn the game and as soon as you’re winning the game … the game changes.”

For Caire, this year’s school board election is a chance for Madison to answer for its history of championing progressive values while at the same time silencing those most apt to address the issues the city and school district are facing.

“I want the community to stand with us, stop fighting us, stop trying to categorize us, stop being threatened and fearful of us,” Caire says. “What if we did that? That would be a fundamental, huge shift in Madison.”

Madison’s school board is unique in that all of the districts are at-large, meaning residents city-wide vote for every district. All three seats will technically have a primary, even though Skylar Croy has dropped out of the race for Seat 3. However his name will still be on the ballot.

The two candidates in each race with the most votes in the Feb. 19 primary will advance to the April 2 general election. Here is a rundown of the contests.

Caire and Carusi are vying to replace Dean Loumos, who is not seeking re-election for Seat 3.

Caire, 47, founder of One City Schools, a public charter school for 4K and kindergarten, says the biggest issue facing Madison’s schools is “the quiet retreat of public support for public education.”

He has four ideas to address that: involve the community in selecting programming; raise the level of respect teachers face; have a community-driven recruitment and retention plan for teachers of color; and increase school funding.

“That to me is a movement about redefining public education, how we engage with it, what it’s for, what it does,” Caire says. “We have to do that, and I feel like there’s no better place to do that than here in Madison.”

Carusi, 52, is an education advocate, and co-founder of Madison SCAPE (School Community Alliance for Public Education). She says she’s been to nearly 200 school board meetings in the last 12 years.

She hopes to narrow the achievement gap by giving teachers a stronger voice and more flexibility in their classrooms. Carusi would also like to keep class sizes small and expand the “Grow Our Own” program, which encourages staff members to become teachers. She staunchly opposes privatization.

“I’m running because I believe very strongly in the power of public education to achieve justice and equity,” Carusi says. “I believe that public education is essential to a healthy and functioning democracy and that we need to prepare our students to not just be college and career ready but also be ready for citizenship in a democratic society.”

Four candidates are running for Seat 4, now held by Howard.

Blaska’s top campaign issue is discipline. If elected, he would revise the district’s Behavior Education Plan and “restore order” to the school board.

“They need someone who’s talking about discipline,” says Blaska, 69, arguing the board is more troubled by police officers in school than “the cafeteria brawlers.”

“They’re all so worried that the police will feed the school to prison pipeline,” he adds. “It’s nonsense. So, let’s have some diversity on that school board — let’s have somebody who’s talking about safer schools and a safer community.”

Restaurant owner and parent Laila Borokhim, 36, approaches her work from a social justice mindset. She’s used her restaurant to raise money for both Planned Parenthood and immigrants. Borokhim calls herself “ethnically ambiguous” — her father is from Iran and her mother New York; both are Jewish. “Depending on who is looking at me I can be a person of color, but sometimes I pass as white,” she says.

She says attempts to address the achievement gap have been stalled by fear and an unwillingness to focus aid on the kids that need it most. “If we can start addressing the achievement gap, everybody’s going to benefit from that, it’s not just going to be the kids that are suffering … I think that there’s a fear that if that kid does better than my kid, then my kid’s not going to be able to do as well, and that’s really, really not how it works.”

Borokhim would work to give resources to struggling schools and work with the community to address problems like homelessness, food insecurity and a lack of early education.

Albert Bryan, 80, is a retired physician who wants to see Madison’s neighborhood schools restored.

He believes achievement gaps were exacerbated by the closing of several neighborhood schools, which disrupted the students’ sense of community. He also says young students need more attention.

“I hope that the schools can finally get to taking care of little kids,” Bryan says. “There are kids who aren’t getting the same attention that they should in their first years and then nothing seems to be done about it.”

Muldrow, is the co-director of GSAFE, an organization that works to create safer schools for LGBTQ students. She too sees the achievement gap as paramount.

“How we treat each other’s children defines who we are as a society and I think right now the color of your skin impacts the outcome of your education in this community,” says Muldrow, who attended Madison’s schools. “That is something that if we do not address now, we will look back and be utterly mortified by the way our community treated young people of color.”

If elected, Muldrow, 31, would advocate for LGTBQ-inclusive, medically accurate, consent-based human growth and development curriculum for K-12 students, and daily arts classes — including dance, music, theater and art.

“I’ve dedicated the last 12 years of my life to cultivating the leadership of young people in our community and I am asking my community to invest in my leadership,” she says.

Seat 5 is the only one with an incumbent, Mertz, running. He hopes to continue the progress the board has made in the six years he’s been a member, while addressing the areas where it has faltered.

“In terms of our transparency, openness, shared decision-making, accountability, trust — all of these things at all levels — I think we’ve moved in the wrong direction,” says Mertz, who turns 58 in March.

In order to address academic and social-emotional improvement, Mertz says the board first needs to address the way it operates. “The students we are failing must be our top concern,” he says. “So when I say the biggest issue is one of trust, accountability, openness, shared decision-making, what I’m saying is that in order to address our failures with students, these have to change.”

Mertz wants the board to be more engaged. “I’d like to see people asking questions, I would like to see more initiatives from the board, I would like to see the board vote more,” Mertz says. “The only way the board speaks as a board is by voting, everything else is just kind of a supersized focus group and I think that democratic governance requires governance and also a vote.”

Mirilli, an education equity consultant at the Department of Public Instruction, is troubled by the district’s — and the board’s — inability to understand system impacts on students.

“Unless you’re actually doing system-change work, the results are either not sustainable or you will increase racial gaps,” Mirilli says. She points to efforts to reduce suspensions and expulsions where “the students benefiting the most are still white students.”

Mirilli, 41, also says the district needs to collaborate with the community to support students.

“The school board cannot do this alone,” she says. Wrap-around support involves “collaborating with the neighborhood and the community resources and service providers, and we’re looking at which providers are providing culturally responsive work.”

She’d use her experience working with students, educators and teachers, and in leadership roles, to make sure all students are learning.

Roe, 62, has been a musician and music teacher for over 35 years. His decision to run was a “perfect storm,” emboldened by the high-profile transition of Sherman Middle School’s principal last year, and what he sees as a downhill trend in kids’ enthusiasm for learning.

“The whole MMSD is out of control,” Roe says. “The superintendent needs to go yesterday, and I don’t like all the things coming from the downtown [district office] and taking away the real people who should be in control: the teachers and the principals.”

If elected, Roe would start by trying to remove Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, and push the district to expand its charter and voucher options to mimic models in both Milwaukee and Racine.

“I want to give the control over schools back to the schools and school choice is a big part of that,” he says. “I want to work at getting school choice so that kids who don’t have the money to go to Madison Country Day will have money to go to alternative schools where they can succeed.” 

[Editor's note: This article has corrected a statement attributed to Cris Carusi that she has been to more than 200 school board meetings in the past 12 years. She has been to nearly 200 meetings.]