Elizabeth Hallmark

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Elizabeth Hallmark

Prior offices

Rochester City School District school board, At-large

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Education

Bachelor's

Mount Holyoke College

Graduate

Antioch New England Graduate School at Antioch University

Ph.D

University of Rochester

Personal

Profession

Adjunct professor

Contact

Personal website

Elizabeth Hallmark is the at-large representative on the Rochester City Board of School Commissioners in New York. Hallmark was first elected to the board in the general election on November 3, 2015.

Hallmark ran for the seat in the Democratic primary election on September 10, 2015. She won that election, which allowed her to advance to the general election. She also filed to run under the Working Families Party designation in the general election on November 3, 2015.

Biography

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Hallmark is an adjunct education professor at three schools: the University of Rochester, Nazareth College and Roberts Wesleyan College. She also has experience teaching in over 20 area schools at every level of education. She is a member of the board of contributors for the Democrat and Chronicle. She previously served on the PTA and as a parent representative on two school-based planning committees. Hallmark earned a bachelor's degree in English and dance from Mount Holyoke College, a master's degree in dance movement therapy from Antioch New England Graduate School at Antioch University and a doctoral degree in education from the University of Rochester. She and her husband have two children who graduated from the Rochester City School District.

Elections

2015

See also: Rochester City School District elections (2015)

Opposition

Four of the seven seats on the Rochester City School District Board of School Commissioners were up for general election on November 3, 2015. A primary election was held on September 10, 2015. The elections were held at large. The seats held by incumbents Willa Powell, Malik Evans, Melisza Campos and Mary Adams were on the ballot. Adams, Evans and Powell won re-election, while Elizabeth Hallmark (D/WF) joined the board. They defeated Matthew McDermott (WF) in the general election.

Campos did not file to run for re-election, ensuring at least one newcomer would join the board. The other three incumbents faced five challengers in the primary election: Howard Eagle, Hallmark, Mia Hodgins, McDermott and Lorenzo Williams. All eight candidates ran as Democrats, which mandated the primary.

There were several cases of cross-filing in this election. In addition to running as Democrats, Adams and Evans filed to run with the Independence Party, and Powell, Hallmark and McDermott additionally ran with the Working Families Party.

Adams, Evans, Powell and Hallmark won the Democratic primary election, allowing them to advance to the general election. Because he cross-filed with the Working Families Party, McDermott also advanced to the general election.

The names of candidates who ran with multiple party designations appeared under each party designation on the general election ballot. The votes from each designation were then pooled together to give a candidate's vote total.

Results

General election

ELECTORAL FUSION: Rochester City School District, At-Large General Election, 4-year term, 2015
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Cross-filed (2)	Malik Evans Incumbent	24.9%	14,907
	Cross-filed (2)	Elizabeth Hallmark	23.8%	14,239
	Cross-filed (2)	Willa Powell Incumbent	22.6%	13,512
	Cross-filed (2)	Mary Adams Incumbent	22.1%	13,204
	Working Families Party	Matthew McDermott	6.2%	3,738
	Nonpartisan	Write-in votes	0.4%	260
Total Votes				59,860
Source: Monroe County, "2015 Monroe County General Election Unofficial Results," accessed November 3, 2015.

FULL BY-PARTY RESULTS:
	Party	Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Democratic	Malik Evans Incumbent	21.8%	13,066
	Democratic	Elizabeth Hallmark	19.7%	11,821
	Democratic	Mary Adams Incumbent	19.6%	11,747
	Democratic	Willa Powell Incumbent	19%	11,368
	Working Families	Matthew McDermott	6.2%	3,738
	Working Families	Elizabeth Hallmark	4%	2,418
	Working Families	Willa Powell Incumbent	3.6%	2,144
	Independence	Malik Evans Incumbent	3.1%	1,841
	Independence	Mary Adams Incumbent	2.4%	1,457
	Nonpartisan	Write-in votes	0.4%	260

Primary election

This election was held September 10, 2015.

Rochester City School District, At-Large, Democratic Primary, 2015
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Malik Evans Incumbent	19.2%	4,910
Mary Adams Incumbent	16.2%	4,137
Elizabeth Hallmark	14.2%	3,637
Willa Powell Incumbent	14.2%	3,629
Lorenzo Williams	10.4%	2,652
Howard Eagle	9.9%	2,517
Mia Hodgins	8.1%	2,065
Matthew McDermott	7.5%	1,923
Write-in votes	0.28%	72
Total Votes		25,542
Source: Monroe County Clerk, "Democratic Primary Final Summary," accessed September 23, 2015

Funding

According to the Democrat & Chronicle, incumbent Willa Powell and challengers Howard Eagle, Mia Hodgins, and Lorenzo Williams reported spending less than $500 on their campaigns for the first campaign finance filing deadline for the primary election. The newspaper also reported that out of the eight candidates in the election, challenger Elizabeth Hallmark spent the most money on her campaign at $1,714, and incumbent Malik Evans raised the most at $9,125, which included a $5,000 personal loan.

Reporting requirements

See also: Campaign finance in the Rochester City School District election

School board candidates were required to file campaign finance disclosure reports with the clerk of the Rochester City School District. No disclosure reports were required from candidates who raised or spent less than $500, but those candidates did have to file a sworn statement to that effect with the school district clerk. Three reports were required per election from those over the $500 threshold. Campaign finance reports for the primary election were due August 12, September 5, and September 30, 2015. The general election campaign finance reports were due October 4, October 29, and November 23, 2015.

Endorsements

Hallmark received endorsements from the following organizations:

• Monroe County Democratic Committee
• Monroe County Working Families Party
• Rochester Labor Council
• Rochester Teachers Association (RTA)
• Rochester City Newspaper
• Board of Education Non-Teaching Employees (BENTE)
• Coalition for Justice in Education (CJE)
• ATU Local 282

Campaign themes

2015

Hallmark highlighted the following issues on her campaign website:

“	Literacy The greatest educational issue we face in the Rochester City School District is making sure our children are readers. This means that children must move from "learning to read" in their youngest years to "reading to learn". Reading proficiency by fourth grade helps children stay on track in school. As the numbers show, however, the majority of RCSD children are not reading at grade level. Whether we use English Language Arts (ELA) test scores from 2012 that show just 17% of third through eighth graders are proficient, or the controversial 2013 Common Core test scores that report only 6% of the same students as proficient in ELA, neither rate is acceptable. I would like to see the district hire more reading teachers, extend summer learning programs, and recruit more children into quality pre-kindergarten programs. I would also push for more curriculum that relates to children's everyday lives while expanding their horizons. The district also needs to build more partnerships with other community organizations to share the message about the importance of families reading together. Alliances between the school district and libraries, recreation centers and faith communities can help those city parents who struggle with their own illiteracy (see one of my articles on empowerment and public good). I would work hard to establish and coordinate those alliances. Community As a former teaching artist who has worked in many K-12 schools, I've seen how school environment powerfully affects academics, and how essential the work/social balance is. Successful schools build community among students and staff. They’re supported by school leaders who strive to know the first name of every student in the school, and encourage their staff to do the same. Relationships are key. Generally, children connected to their community thrive while those without a sense of belonging slip more easily through the cracks. All children can learn, especially when surrounded by caring adults. Children experiencing hunger, poverty, or violence, however, need particular social-emotional supports at school and beyond. Since Rochester has the highest child poverty rate in the nation, this challenge demands solutions both inside and outside the school (see one of my articles on school climate). Our schools must reach out to parents and develop them as leaders. Every school should have more than one parent liaison whose job it is to reinforce relationships among families within the school, between the school and its immediate neighborhood, and between the school and other parent liaisons networked through the Office of Parent Engagement. Social events, art events, celebrations, and after-school opportunities are vital for developing community. Far from being a distraction to academics, social events can be the glue that helps students find meaning in attending school. As a board member, I would set expectations for myself and every other commissioner to be accountable for developing these relationship goals in each of our assigned schools. Choice Charter schools are here to stay, and parents' interest in them is understandable in light of the district's reputation. However, charters are not a silver bullet solution to the problems of our larger community. Charters provide no guarantee of admission, can ask students to leave whose needs they cannot serve, and have varied reputations themselves. While some charters can help some families, it is the Board of Education's responsibility to improve schools that must serve everyone (see one of my articles on making schools work for all). It would be wise of the district, however, to borrow a page from the charter school playbook: Autonomy. There should be room for curricular autonomy among different school buildings so that parents have a wide variety of options to choose from within the district. One-size-fits-all programming and scheduling is wrong. Central Office should support diversity among schools rather than control and manage them toward standardized learning. We should be doing all we can to encourage community and teacher-led ideas for schools, as well as new iterations of successful ones such as those that might focus on arts, sports, International Baccalaureate, Expeditionary Learning, technology, multiple language, and more. Accountability The superintendent recently presented a draft budget of $798 million for the 2015-16 year. About three-fifths of the total budget is going to support salaries and benefits of staff, while an additional two-fifths are spread across a spectrum of needs, including transportation, facilities, special education, food services and charter school tuition. Every dollar counts. Allocating $800 million annually is a huge responsibility and obligation of the board, and we must carefully assess all expenditures with respect to the core question of whether or not our children benefit. As a board member, I would monitor progress systematically and apply pressure for the Superintendent to be held accountable for using educational best-practices for all grade levels. Two areas that I particularly want to examine are the extended learning time initiatives (ELT), and grant monies (which represent ~11% of the total budget). While increased instructional time may sound good, I have questions about the quality of that time and whether it's translating into more learning for a significant number of students. Regarding grants, I am not convinced that Central Office has established deliberative oversight of these monies or been successful at leveraging grant initiatives to build educational capacity that can be sustained beyond the lives of the grants themselves (see one of my articles on borrowing and expenditures). I would work as a team member committed to developing strong Board leadership. High-Stakes Testing (a.k.a. Adult Evaluations) We expect schools to have the highest possible standards so children are challenged to grow as learners and become productive, civically-active adults, but we're harmed by mind-numbing regulations that choke out children's eagerness to learn. The best tests diagnose what students have and have not learned in class, and provide information that teachers can use to improve teaching. Despite the fact that good tests have always been in existence, the state has added another layer of tests solely for the sake of teacher measurement. Testing does not equal better learning and in fact steals time away from instruction in class. Rather than supporting their own learning, extra testing causes children to be used as pawns for the purpose of adult evaluation. Parents are angry about time spent on testing third through eighth grade (a 128% increase in testing time since 2010!), the tests' expense, their wildly invalid metrics, and how their use narrows curriculum (see one of my articles on testing). I favor improved teacher evaluation, but not by these flawed means. As a member of the School Board, I would push for better teacher and administrative assessments that are not linked to student state testing, and I would call for authentic and long-overdue collaboration between unions and the state education department. Coherence This golden mean image suggests logical congruency. One of the district's most entrenched problems is its lack of clear organization and management of moving parts. On both physical and human capital levels, the district needs to improve its documentation and analysis of information. In other words, although it should be fairly straightforward to track or distribute physical supplies according to school requests, this process has been famously fraught with problems. And while it is one thing to diagnose which schools need furniture or textbooks, it is quite another to collect and compare information about our student population. Both types of information management need careful attention. To begin addressing this problem, the board has begun creating a series of "finish line" reports that evaluate items like graduation rates, attendance, average scoring proficiencies, suspensions, and other student demographics in its 53 schools. Although this kind of snapshot reporting is an excellent goal and could provide exactly the kind of big picture needed for making policy and budget decisions, such a tool is useful only if its data are clearly defined. For example, when the report states School of the Art's suspensions were 516 while Charlotte's were 922, we don’t know whether these numbers represent the total number of students suspended, or total suspensions that might include a smaller number of students suspended several times each. Do these numbers represent in school or out of school suspensions? Full day or partial? This kind of puzzling documentation exists throughout these reports. My larger question is: Who prepared these reports and why was the information layout so poorly designed? The reports are a perfect example of the district's problem with organization of its data. Despite the good intentions behind them, such tools cannot be used to compare apples to apples, so to speak. Because of my extensive research background, I bring invaluable analytic tools to the table. As a board member I would work to make sure information and data is recorded, defined, and presented in consistent, coherent ways that help rather than hamstring the board's ability to analyze and make good policy decisions.	”
—Elizabeth Hallmark's campaign website (2015)

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Elizabeth Hallmark' 'Rochester City School District'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Elizabeth Hallmark - Google News

See also

• Rochester City School District, New York
• Rochester City School District elections (2015)
• Incumbency no guarantee of success in Nov. 3 school board elections (November 6, 2015)
• What happened in Nov.'s top board elections? (November 4, 2015)

External links

Suggest a link

• Rochester City School District

• Office website
• Campaign website
• LinkedIn page