Former member Jill Tripp to seek return in 4-way race for 3 Board seats
by Robert Lynch; May 2, 2026
The Ithaca Board of Education’s longest-tenured member, its current president, 17-year incumbent Sean Eversley Bradwell, will not seek another term in this month’s election, Ithaca City School District (ICSD) officials revealed on the district’s website late this week.
The district’s listing, posted after the mandated April 29 ICSD candidate filing deadline, also disclosed that former Board of Education member Jill Tripp, defeated for reelection in last year’s voting, has returned as a candidate this year to seek a new, three-year term.
Incumbent Board members Garrick Blalock and Madeline Cardona will also seek reelection in the May 19 contest. One newcomer, Sara Garner, has also petitioned for the Board, making this year’s a four-way race for three Board seats.
Tripp’s return stands notable as many have seen her as a taxpayer-friendly voice seated among colleagues viewed by some as far more liberal.
To some, Board President Eversley Bradwell’s planned retirement from school board service comes as little surprise. During several meetings this school year, the Board President has hinted of his potential departure from the nine-person body. Yet he’s never stated those plans outright.
Eversley Bradwell’s exit at the end of his current term June 30 sets the stage for a leadership contest this summer. Based on the outcome of this month’s voting, several persons, including Blalock and Tripp, stand as the incumbent’s potential successors.
Adam Krantweiss and Emily Workman,, two moderate-leaning Ithaca school board members, could also compete for the president’s position. Krantweiss’ and Workman’s seats on the Board of Education do not expire until 2027.
The latest ICSD candidate announcement provided only brief resumes of the four declared candidates. It allowed no opportunity for departing members—in this instance, Eversley Bradwell—to state reasons for declining a new term. To the best of knowledge, Eversley Bradwell has not issued any such statement to date.
“We are fortunate on this board to have the leadership of Dr. Bradwell, who has an encyclopedia knowledge of school policy,” Garrick Blalock praised the incumbent president last July 8 as he, Blalock, successfully sought elevation to become Board Vice President.
Of Eversley Bradwell, Blalock said, “I’m told he will not serve as president forever. There will be an end,” Blalock predicted. “I don’t know when that will be. But before that date comes, I would like to avail myself of his expertise and work with him and absorb the knowledge that he has accumulated over the years and basically learn from him.”
Garrick Blalock’s words that day provided perhaps the most telling prediction that Eversley Bradwell was on his way out. At several meetings hence, the board president has only vaguely alluded to an intended departure.
Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, an assistant professor of Education at Ithaca College, was first elected to the Ithaca Board of Education in 2009. He was elected Board President in July 2022, and then reelected by board colleagues to continue as president in each of the three succeeding years. Only once did he face opposition to preside.
In the traumatic year of 2024, when voters rejected a first-proposed school budget by a seven-to-three margin and also ousted two long-time board incumbents, Eversley Bradwell faced a leadership challenge from Jill Tripp, perceived as a more frugal centrist. After divided votes on the first two ballots during the Board’s July reorganization meeting, Eversley Bradwell eventually prevailed and went on to serve a third term as board president.
Most recently, Eversley Bradwell earned his fourth, and now final, term as president last July. He won that year without opposition.
Jill Tripp, if elected May 19, would return to the school board after only a one-year absence.
“I’ve been watching and listening closely for two years,” Tripp stated when she competed unsuccessfully for school board president against Eversley Bradwell in 2024, “and I feel like all too often, lately every week the Board finds out about important decisions that have been made that we weren’t informed of. This is a real concern to me,” she said.
“This is the Board of Education. This isn’t some satellite advisory board of a special interest. It is the Board of Education,” Tripp stated at the time.
During her three years of service, Tripp may most famously be remembered for her attempting to squeeze a major increase in financial contributions from Cornell University toward school operations.
First elected in 2022, Jill Tripp earned the support of many taxpayers and fiscal conservatives. Yet in last year’s reelection campaign, she failed to win the influential endorsement of the Ithaca Teachers’ Association (ITA), support crucial especially in lower-turnout elections like that in 2025.
In a seven-way race for four open positions, Tripp fell to fifth place, losing to Madeline Cardona by 113 votes (2,238 votes to Cardona’s 2,351). Cardona, like other winners in last year’s contest, had secured the Teachers’ Association’s endorsement.
Madeline Cardona’s victory allowed her only to fill out the final year of a vacant position, requiring her to run again this year to remain on the school board.
The Ithaca Teachers Association has yet to announce its endorsements in this year’s ICSD elections.
Of any incumbent, Garrick Blalock has perhaps worked the hardest this past year to groom himself for presidential succession. Blalock, an Associate Professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell, has served on the Ithaca Board of Education since 2023. He’s chaired the Finance Committee since 2024 and the combined Facilities and Finance Committee this past year.
Those two committee assignments have accorded Blalock prominence in shepherding both annual district budgets and this year’s proposed $43.9 Million Capital Project Referendum. That capital referendum is also on the May 19 ICSD ballot.
In 2024, Blalock vied with Adam Krantweiss for Board Vice President. As was the case of the election for president that July, Blalock tied with Krantweiss in successive board votes as he sought to become second-in-line. Impasse ended when on the third attempt Blalock conceded and switched his vote to Krantweiss.
This past July, under revised procedures that allowed secret ballots, Blalock secured the Vice Presidency, five votes to four, beating Emily Workman.
Madeline Cardona, now seeking her first, full board term, is a native of Puerto Rico and serves as the board’s only Latina representative. A Tompkins County resident since 2019, Cardona is the mother of two teenagers who attend Ithaca High School. Her candidate profile lists her employment as that of an Uber driver, a job she says which allows her flexibility to raise her family.
Cardona’s candidate profile states, “Madeline is committed to teaching her children the importance of self-advocacy and empathy, believing that strong communities are built through shared responsibility, accountability, and support.” Cardona also credits her Puerto Rican roots for instilling within her “values like collective responsibility, integrity, and mutual support.”
Cardona has attended most Board of Education meetings during her past year in office. But she’s remained noticeably silent during most discussions. During a 2025 pre-election candidates forum, Cardona said she was “not fully educated” on that year’s district budget to say how she’d vote on it.
“I’m running for the Board to give a chance to families like mine; somebody who cares and works hard as a single mom.” Cardona proudly told that candidates forum. Blessed with the ITA’s endorsement back then, Cardona edged out Tripp and was given a year to prove the value of her contribution.
If Madeline Cardona was last year’s fresh face to ICSD Politics, Sara Garner is this year’s.
A former Cayuga Heights and Boynton Middle School attendee and Ithaca High School graduate, Garner holds a degree in Human Development, Social Policy and Inequality earned at Cornell, and currently serves as the Director of Community Nursery School in Ithaca.
Garner’s resume, stated in her district-posted candidate profile, references her past teaching experience in New York City and San Francisco. Among those assignments, the profile states, “Sara worked in New York City for an alternative-to-incarceration program, where she taught GED classes and served as a court advocate, facilitating non-prison sentences for individuals facing felony charges.”
This year’s four-way election for ICSD board service stands less crowded than that in the two most recent election cycles. Seven candidates (for three seats) ran in 2024, and another seven (for four seats) ran in 2025. The decline in candidate interest could reflect the waning of taxpayer anger over the first-offered 2024 budget..
Sean Eversley Bradwell’s departure will not only spur a succession rivalry for ICSD board leadership. It may also mark a change in leadership tone. On matters as recent as this year’s proposed budget and its tax levy, Eversley Bradwell has stood at times in the middle, mediating competing sides that would tax more or tax less. He refused to interject his own opinions at times while also attempting compromise.
“I hope that I have demonstrated compassion, empathy, understanding, an ability to reach out to further having conversations, taking walks, having coffee, being yelled at, all those things,” Eversley Bradwell said two summers ago, when during his contested fight for leadership another board member asked him to describe his management style. “I hope that I maintain that level of… humanity and compassion for the community,” the board president said.
Come this July, Sean Eversley Bradwell’s leadership will be gone. Someone else’s must take its place.
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