BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – April 21’s Board of Education election results here and in Irvington may be better regarded for its distinctions than for its results.
Those who dismissed April 21’s results as having the established team’s places on the school boards secured risk missing two permutations respectively unique for Newark and Irvington.
In Newark, the second year of having 16- and 17-year-olds to vote yielded lower registration and turnout. Irvington voters found themselves having the now-rare opportunity to vote on a school budget question.
In NEWARK, a majority of participating registered voters swept another slate of “Moving Newark Schools Forward” candidates for the three three-year seats plus a fourth to fill an unexpired term.
Current Board President Hasani Council was the night’s top vote-getter here with 3,434 votes for 25.46 percent of the vote.
This tally from County Clerk Christopher Durkin’s Election Division essexclerk.com April 24 posting is with all 207 polling districts – 100 percent – reporting. It is presumed that all Vote By Mail Ballots, absentee and provisional ballots have been counted by press time.
Mark Comesanas edged fellow newcomer Quamid Childs – 2,904 or 21.53 versus 2,902 or 21.52 – for the other two seats.
“MNSF” is the seventh straight slate from a fusion ticket created by Mayor Ras Baraka from the previously competing “For the Children” and “For Our Kids” slates.
School board candidates and purpose-made teams or platforms are created without any labeling or identification to a political party. This is because school board elections are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Elected officials who are allied with a political party, however, may endorse BOE candidates and may lend a candidate or a ticket partisan “Get Out the Vote” resources and machinery.
Lisa A. Gray was ranked fourth or “best of the rest” at 1,553 or 11.52. John Farrell was next at 1,541 or 11.43. Tawheed Peters rounded out the balloted field with 1.15 or 8.54.
There were 13,486 ballots cast for the six candidates, not counting ballots for write-in candidates.
Overall turnout from both municipalities was 6,109 voters from a registered pool of 194,440 – which comes out to 3.14 percent. There was a 3.30 percent turnout last year. 3.04 in 2024 and 3.11 in 2023.
This and last year are when 16- and 17-year-old Newarkers have been permitted to register and vote in BOE elections. Newark was given state permission to get high schoolers more involved in voting and to bolster the sub-four-percent turnout levels.
This year’s registration was 1,524 16- and 17-year-olds – down by about nine percent from last year’s 1,772.
Turnout this year was 45 such voters – 2.95 percent of registered teens. 2025 saw 73 teens vote for 4.11 percent.
The low or lower registrations and turnouts is despite Newark Public Schools’ registration drives. Members of the Great Oaks Legacy Charter School turned their students’ participation into a demonstration, marching a block to deposit their VBMBs into an Essex County Drop Box along Green Street.
Two teen voters told chalkbeat.com of their April 21 polling station encounters. One poll worker told one student that she was in the wrong polling district – and the voting machine jammed in the “right” station. The other said he was flatly told by a worker, “You’re too young to vote.”
In IRVINGTON, voters who marked their ballots for the three unopposed candidates also voted on a line item for the Irvington Public Schools 2026-27 budget.
Syesha Benbow, Jordan Geffrard and Audrey Lyon – on “The Children’s Team” – were returned for another three-year term. The team name is another in a succession of platforms organized by Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss.
Current Board President Benbow was the night’s top vote-getter here with 710 votes or 34.4 percent.
Board member Lyon placed second at 680 for 32.98. Geffrard gathered 672 for 32.59. There were 2,602 votes cast among the three candidates.
Voters here, however, carried a ballot question to raise $17,459,529 for general funds for the IPS 2026-27 budget. There were 506 “Yes” votes for 79.46 versus 130 “No” votes for 20.54. There were 633 votes cast on the public referendum question.
Annual school budget ballot questions have disappeared from the ballot over the last decade with the exception that a budget item – as in a special construction project or to fill a budget deficit – exceeds the statewide two percent budget cap.
IPS has not said why the district needs the $17,459,529 except for the general fund.
Many public school districts who moved their elections from April to November, as part of the General Election ballot, were allowed to vote by state law in exchange for not posting the annual school budget question. The state, in 2024, waived off the school budget public referendum vote with the above exception.
