Update on Buffalo school board elections

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Six Buffalo school board seats are on the ballot this November, presenting the possibility of new blood on a body where toxic relationships between members frequently have devolved into shouting matches and interfered with deliberations and decision-making.

Last year’s elections for the board’s three at-large seats resulted in significant turnover. One incumbent chose not to run for reelection. Another was defeated. Two new at-large members were elected and seated earlier this month.

Come next January, they will be joined by at least two more new faces, and possibly more.

All six district seats are on the ballot this year. So far it appears four incumbents will seek reelection: the West District’s Jen Mecozzi, the Central District’s Paulette Woods, the North District’s Cindi McEachon and newly elected Board President Kathy Evans-Brown, who represents the East District. 

Sharon Belton-Cottman, who preceded Evans-Brown as board president, is not seeking another term. Neither is Park District Board Member Terri Schuta.

Schuta, a former Buffalo teacher and principal, was elected to the board in 2022. She has endorsed another Buffalo teacher, Erik Bohen, to succeed her.

Bohen served briefly in the state Assembly, filling a vacancy created in 2018 when Mickey Kearns left the 142nd District seat — which encompasses much of South Buffalo — to become Erie County Clerk. A registered Democrat running on the Republican and Conservative lines, Bohen beat then-Erie County Legislator Pat Burke in the April special election, then lost to Burke in the November general election. Burke, also a Democrat, has held the seat since.

Bohen declared his candidacy for the Park District seat on Jan. 11. No other candidates in that district have followed suit.

Another school board hopeful is Stephon Wright, who announced this week he’ll run for the Ferry District seat currently occupied by Belton-Cottman, the former two-term board president who was first elected in 2011. 

Wright first sought a seat on the board while he was a high school student in 2012, was subsequently named the board’s first nonvoting student representative, and ran unsuccessfully for an at-large seat in 2014. When he made that bid for office, he referred to Belton-Cottman as a mentor, according to The Buffalo News. He currently works for Say Yes Buffalo and invests in real estate, according to his campaign website.

Raziya Hill, who finished fifth out of six candidates in last year’s election for at-large seats, is said to be considering a run for the Ferry District seat, too.

So far, Mecozzi is the only incumbent district board member with a challenger. Talia Rodriguez, who works for a nonprofit agency that combats human trafficking, announced her candidacy for the West District on Jan. 6. 

Four days later Mecozzi announced she’d seek a fourth 3-year term. She first took office in 2016. The announcement surprised many, including some of her supporters. It was widely expected Mecozzi would demur on another term and focus on her ambition to run for the Niagara District Common Council seat two years from now.

As yet, no challengers have emerged to incumbents McEachon, Evans-Brown or Woods.

School board elections are nonpartisan, which means there are no party primaries in June. Candidates must gather 200 valid signatures from registered voters in the district they want to represent in order to appear on the November ballot. Those signatures are due to the county elections board the first week in April.

This is the third time Buffalo school board elections have been held in November alongside races for other elected offices. They used to occur in May, on the theory that school board elections should be insulated from the partisan politics that surround races for other offices.

State legislators in 2019 voted to change that practice, at the behest of advocates who argued holding the races in November would increase voter participation. Turnout for Buffalo school board races under the previous system was as low as 5 percent some years and never broke 20 percent. 

As a result of that legislation, district seats were elected in November 2022. Voter participation in those races varied by district, according to Erie County Board of Elections documents: In the East District, 15 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the race; in Ferry, 21 percent; in Central, 22 percent; in Park, 30 percent; in North, 31 percent; and in West, 34 percent. 

Only Mecozzi, the West District incumbent, faced an opponent that year; in the other five districts, there was just one candidate on the ballot.

There were more than five times as many votes cast in last November’s at-large seat races as there were in May 2019, before the change. Turnout that year, when both district and at-large seats were on the ballot, was about 5 percent.

Last year’s elections resulted in the seating of two new at-large board members, Janita Everhart and Adrianna Zullich. Incumbent Larry Scott finished first in the voting to win a second 5-year term. 

With two district seat incumbents leaving office, at least four of the nine board seats will have turned over by next January.

The tense relationships between school board members have sometimes manifested publicly. In 2020, when the board held meetings virtually, Woods was caught on video giving the middle finger and using profanity while Mecozzi was speaking. Woods first denied her actions, then later apologized for them. 

Last year, debate over the district’s plans to build a new commissary for producing student meals — specifically, whether to own or lease a new building — sometimes devolved into shouting matches.

Geoff Kelly