School District Changes

It was no surprise that voters approved school budgets on the South Fork Tuesday. Thanks to the state’s tax-increase cap, budgets now grow modestly from year to year and antipathy toward school spending, once high here, has abated.

An undercurrent of change emerged as voting day neared. In Amagansett, two write-in candidates sought places on the school board and the district budget results showed a ominous number of no votes — more than a third, in fact.

Claudia L. Quintana’s write-in win in Amagansett was notable in two respects. She is a teacher with a master’s degree who was born in Guatemala and is fluent in English and Spanish. That as a write-in she was the number-two vote-getter is significant for Spanish-speaking households with children in the district and exciting for the community as a whole.

In Springs, another bicultural Latina, Ivonne Tovar-Morales, made a write-in bid for a seat on the school board but was unsuccessful. She lost to Patrick Brabant, whose name is more familiar to voters in the district perhaps, and someone who has, as a member of the public, almost religiously attended school board meetings. 

Ms. Quintana’s win and Ms. Tovar-Morales’s seeking a seat bode well for diversity on school boards here in the future.