Young Man on a Mission

One would be forgiven for harboring some skepticism about the survival prospects of a 22-year-old member on the Smithtown school board. But when Scott Martella ran for office one year after graduating from Boston University, board president Bob Rossi was not among those with doubts.

"I knew he would be an asset," Rossi said.

Rossi's son Chris went to high school with Martella. There, Martella was on student council. He acted in school plays. He was irreverent. He quoted Voltaire – "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh" – in his yearbook.

A bit of irony then, characterizes Martella, now 23, in his new habitat: He's closer than ever to the pulpit, but he's also a more serious student than ever before.

"He's actually very subdued. I cause more problems than he does," Rossi jokes. "If he doesn't know first-hand about something, he tries to research and learn about it."

In his senior year of college, Martella interned in D.C. for the lobbying arm of Boston Scientific. He attended Congressional committee hearings, investigated proposed laws' economic impact, and ultimately got hooked.

Fresh out of school, he joined the staff of state senator Brian X. Foley (D–Blue Point) as a policy adviser. Far from being inspired by his new perspective as a political insider, Martella became frustrated.

"I could never have fathomed the level of dysfunction in state government," he said. He thought the degree of factionalism was unreasonable. He gravitated toward education policy and became disgusted with what he saw as the Long Island delegation's tendency to "use education as a chip" – that is, to trade education money for other funds.

"There are significant inequities, inherent in the way we fund education, that have been to the detriment of Long Island," Martella said.

It was a conversation with board member Lou Liguori, not any suggestion from within Foley's Senate office, that prompted Martella to contest a seat in the May 2009 school board election. Martella, in fact, held back from talking to fellow staffers about his run and never advertised his connection to Foley, explaining, "You can't assign yourself to another human being."

His platform, unsurprisingly, was less about the conventional work of budget allocation and more about the fight for more resources from Albany. He wrote in campaign literature about "modifying the way the state determines our funding level" and getting Smithtown "the money it rightfully deserves." He put friends from high school in charge of a Facebook campaign. He reached out to classmates with the promise that "students enrolled in Smithtown Schools [would] have the same resources available to them that we had when we were students."

How much of Martella's victory can be chalked up to the youth vote will never be known with certainty. But Superintendent Ed Ehmann, whom Martella first knew as the principal of Smithtown High School, shared reports of an uncommonly high youth turnout. Martella beat Paul Starrantino by the margin of 2,127-1,649 (56%-44%).

The night of May 19, 2009, while members of the board followed the returns together, Martella was home with his family. "My mom kept refreshing [the computer screen] every two seconds," he says laughing. Once victory was sealed, the phone calls came flooding in, along with some friends' confessions that they hadn't actually thought Martella would win. He was, after all, now the youngest trustee in the history of the Smithtown Board of Education.

Martella has approached the job humbly, making sure to listen. He's accepted tutelage – and some age-based ribbing – from three-decade-member Gladys Waldron and from Rossi, who notes Martella's compassion and that "he feels he's giving back somewhat for the education he received."

Martella understands, too, that his greatest asset is his connection to the student experience – the impact that classroom overcrowding or diminished busing can have on a teenager. He recounts a story of tossing a football with a district middle school student who spoke of a beloved teacher who was "getting fired because of budget cuts."

"What are you supposed to say to that?" Martella asked.