Shennell McCloud is CEO of Project Ready, a Newark-based nonprofit that works to increase voting in the city.

Pick any suburb in New Jersey. Say only 19% of its third graders can read. And there’s a school board election coming up.

I’m going to bet that a large number of that city’s registered voters are going to vote for the school board that they think will bring about a much-needed change in literacy outcomes.

Here in Newark, 19% is the percentage of third graders who passed last year’s state reading exam, we recently learned, a number that should scare us all into action. And that action is voting.

Indeed, the school board is likely one of the most important elections there is in New Jersey, because it’s the school board that holds the superintendent of schools accountable for results. Without a strong school board that asks deep questions and demands results, there is no accountability. And without accountability, our students will continue to lack what they need to be successful. Learning how to read in school is a civil right.

My organization, Project Ready, works to register residents to vote and bring them out to the polls on election day because voting is one of the most important actions any citizen can take. It’s not just important, it’s critical to the advancement of Black and Brown people.

When I look at the low voter turnout for school board elections — 3% in Newark — I know that we have so much work to do to persuade the average citizen how powerful their vote truly is. Our work involves convincing people who have been ignored and neglected for too long that their voice indeed matters. I certainly understand why so many Newark residents believe their vote doesn’t matter. Because for far too long their voice hasn’t seemed to matter.

Recently, we created a pop-up museum in order to encourage and inspire our residents to vote. The museum walks through different eras in the voting rights movement and being in the museum easily transports you to a time and place when our people fought bitterly for the right to vote. To think we can honor what they did for us just by coming out to vote is an inspiring thought.

But it’s more than that. One of the collections in the museum is a replica of the classroom of Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old first grader who bravely became the first little girl to show up for class in an all-white school, armed only with her little pigtail and a Supreme Court declaration that separate but equal is unconstitutional when it comes to public education.

Here we are, dozens of years later, with schools that are absolutely unequal and appear just as separate. We cannot let this injustice stand and the only way the average citizen can do something real and powerful is to vote.

We see what the alternative is: disenfranchisement. The alternative is low literacy rates and a lack of public process when the superintendent’s five-year contract comes up for renewal. It was just a few months ago that our community learned that the superintendent’s contract was automatically renewed without public comment or even a public vote by the board. We all know that was just wrong and disrespectful.

The story of Ruby Bridges also highlights the throughline between voting and education and how Black and brown children have been robbed of an equitable education for years. And how things don’t change until good people take courageous action. Even today, the story of Ruby Bridges is so threatening that we hear reports of schools trying to ban the movie that portrays this important time in history.

There’s no reason to accept that in Montclair, which is only a few miles away, the voter turnout at the school board election is four times higher than in Newark.

We can change that on Tuesday.

Educate yourselves. Find out who has a plan to press the district for a drastic change in literacy rates. Vote for those candidates. And then stay involved to hold them accountable for your vote. This is the only path to change.

(This was first published at nj.com.)