In New Jersey, a nonpartisan school board election is being held in Newark Public Schools on Tuesday. Three of the nine at-large seats on the school board are on the ballot. Two incumbents, Leah Owens and Tave Padilla, are running for re-election. Incumbent Kim Gaddy did not file for re-election. All three incumbents were first elected to the board in 2016, and they ran together as the Newark Unity slate and were endorsed by Mayor Ras J. Baraka. The eight consecutive elections prior to 2019 also saw members of slates endorsed by the mayor win election to the board.

 

Incumbent Tave Padilla, A’Dorian Murray-Thomas, and Shayvonne Anderson are running together on the mayor’s Moving Newark Schools Forward slate. Incumbent Leah Owens, Denise Cole, and Saafir Jenkins are running together on the Children Over Politics team. The other candidates in the race—Maggie Freeman, Priscilla Garces, Arlene Ramsey, Yolanda Johnson, and Denise Ann Crawford—are running as independents.

 

The 2019 election is the second since local control was returned to the district by the New Jersey State Board of Education on September 13, 2017. The state originally took over the district in 1995.

 

Newark Public Schools served 40,514 students during the 2016-2017 school year.