Can partials access locals in sails? why not?

I have an index.ejs for my homepage that renders <%- partial ('../user/new.ejs') %> for my signup page. In the process of adding flash error messages I noticed that the partial does not have access to locals [flash undefined error]. Meanwhile if I load the partial as a view (by accessing root/user/new directly then the flash messages are executed properly.

Could someone explain why this is, and is there any work around?

Controller:

create: function (req, res, next) {

    User.create({
        email: req.param('email'),
        encryptedPassword: req.param('password')
    }, function userCreated(err, user) {
        if (err) { 
            console.log(err); 

            req.session.flash = {
                err: err.ValidationError
            }

            return res.redirect('/');
        }
        res.redirect('/user/show/'+ user.id);
        //res.json(user);
    });
},

index.ejs is just <%- partial ('../user/_signup.ejs') %> for now

_signup.ejs

<div class="col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12" style="max-width:400px;">
<h1>Sign up</h1>
<form action="/user/create" method="post" role="form" class="form-signin">


<% if(flash && flash.err) { %>
    <ul class="alert alert-success">
    <% Object.keys(flash.err).forEach(function(err) { %>
        <li> <%- JSON.stringify(flash.err[err]) %></li>
    <% }) %>
    </ul>
<% } %>

    <div class="form-group control-group"> 
        <label for="email"></label>
        <input name="email" class="form-control" placeholder="Email" type="text"/>
    </div>

    <div class="form-group control-group"> 
        <label for="password"></label>
        <input name="password" class="form-control" placeholder="Password" id="password" type="password" title="Password"/>
    </div>

    <div class="form-group control-group"> 
        <label for="passwordConfirmation"></label>
        <input name="passwordConfirmation" class="form-control" placeholder="Confirm Password" type="password" title="Password"/>
    </div>

    <input type="submit" value="Signup" class="btn btn-success"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="_csrf" value="<%= _csrf %>"/>
</form>