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election day

Delayed notice threatens turnout for run-off CEC elections

Add one more snag to the list of woes plaguing this year’s community education council elections. Dozens of run-off elections happened this week with such scant notice that several parent leaders said that they weren’t aware the election existed until hours after it began.

The 48-hour run-off elections began Wednesday after first-round elections in 27 districts yielded either ties or fewer than the nine required council representatives. But information about the run-off was not announced until hours after online ballot boxes opened yesterday. Even then, several of the parent leaders who vote in these elections said that they weren’t notified of the run-offs .

The election will decide who will serve two-year terms on the community education councils beginning next school year. Representatives are scheduled to be announced tomorrow.

Caroline Hall, PTA co-president at P.S. 151, said she learned about the run-off from another parent yesterday.

“We didn’t get any official notification,” said Hall, whose husband, the PTA treasurer, is also one of the so-called “selector” parent leaders who vote in the elections. “If we weren’t the kind of people who were diligent, we would have given up.” (more…)

election day

Michael Mulgrew wins teachers union election in a landslide

Michael Mulgrew has won election to his first full three-year term as the president of the city’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers announced today.

Mulgrew was elected with 91 percent of the vote over James Eterno, a candidate from an opposition group within the union. UFT spokesman Dick Riley said the union was still waiting to hear the final vote tally, which will be released tomorrow.

Mulgrew, 44, became union president last year, when the UFT’s executive board appointed him to serve the remainder of then-president Randi Weingarten’s term after she left to run the national union. A relative newcomer to the union — only five years ago he was a high school teacher in Staten Island — Mulgrew became Weingarten’s designated successor after winning an internal run-off race she held.

UFT presidents typically win reelection by huge margins, but Mulgrew’s win is impressive even compared to his predecessors. In 1999, the first time former UFT president Randi Weingarten ran for office, she won with 74 percent of the vote. (more…)

decision 2008

Election Day bake sales update: Cookies selling like hotcakes

Students manned the bake sale at the Brooklyn School for International Studies.

High school seniors manned the bake sale at the Brooklyn School for International Studies.

Long lines at the polls this morning were a nuisance to voters, but they were a boon to students and parents who set up Election Day bake sales to benefit their schools:

  • At my polling location, a shared school building on Baltic Street in Brooklyn, proud School for International Studies seniors struggled to keep their bake sale stocked.
  • A friend who waited an hour to vote this morning at PS 107 in Park Slope said of that school’s Parent-Teacher Association, “They were doing some seemingly brisk business in pumpkin muffins and bottled water.”
  • A parent selling baked goods at PS 29 in Cobble Hill told the New York Times, “I’ve been here ten years, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a line at all. Sales are going amazing.”
  • A Carroll Gardens resident wrote to New York Magazine to report problems getting her vote cast at PS 58, but she added: “On the upside: kick-ass bakesale.”
  • And Elizabeth voted at PS 154 in Windsor Terrace, where all of the chocolate chip cookies being peddled by fifth-graders were sold out by 11 a.m.

Of course, most of these schools have parents who can choose to spend the day working a bake sale and a PTA savvy enough to organize them. Not all schools do.

In our comments this morning, Ms. M said the PTA at the school where she teaches “doesn’t think of things like” Election Day bake sales.

Where did you vote, and did you see a bake sale?

decision 2008

PTAs banking on record turnout for Election Day bake sales

Elected officials in Brooklyn promote Election Day bake sales (via NY Real Estate Blog)

Brooklyn elected officials promote Election Day bake sales (via NY Real Estate Law Blog)

Record voter turnout projected for tomorrow could have a sweet outcome for schools that are serving double-duty as polling places: a record take for parent-organized Election Day bake sales.

At PS 183 on the Upper East Side, parents will try to capitalize on long lines and captive audiences for the first time ever after two mothers independently pitched the idea of an Election Day bake sale to the Parent-Teacher Association, said Lisa Ehrlich, PTA co-president. Nearly 100 parents have volunteered to bring baked goods or staff the sale, Ehrlich said, and the PTA has heard from other schools that it could net as much as $800 — a sizable lagniappe at a time when school budget cuts are thought to be impending.

In Park Slope, the PTA at PS 10 is shooting for closer to $1,000, said Parent Coordinator Madeleine Seide, who noted that the school is a polling site for South Park Slope and its parents pride themselves on their baking skills. Plus, she said, “people want their early morning coffee and a muffin.”

Staff members, teachers, and other parents are working with PS 10′s PTA to keep the bake sale replenished with primarily homemade baked goods throughout the day, Seide said.

How many PTAs will be hawking brownies to voters tomorrow morning is not known. Neither the Department of Education nor its Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy, which works with families, encourages PTAs to use Election Day traffic to their advantage, according to DOE spokesman William Havemann.

Last week, several elected officials from Brooklyn, including City Council members David Yassky and Letitia James and Borough President Marty Markowitz, held a press conference to call on schools in Brooklyn to hold bake sales tomorrow and on voters to “act generously” as they wait in line.

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