Spin off to Meet the Candidates night

[cathy]

For those of us who are new to this whole thing and really don't have a good feel for what's broken right now....

What sorts of things do you want to hear about from the candidates?

I'm not looking for anyone to air the dirty laundry of any of the candidates, just the type of issues those of us who are still a little overwhelmed by it all might be unaware of and unintentionally overlooking. That way we can (hopefully) ask useful questions to aid in our decision.

[Chris_Wendt]

Cathy

Perhaps you would agree with me that the absence of responses to your question, other than mine, is quite odd.

So what are we looking at? No debate. Prior years' debates revealed telling differences among candidates, strengths and weaknesses, as well as one criminal record that was exposed during the Q&A portion after the debating. In a more recent debate, one candidate was stumped by a question from the League of Women Voters and had to admit to not knowing the difference between an adverb and any other part of speech.

This tells me that some of the candidates may have weaknesses they do not want revealed, or, that they possibly fear the strengths of their competitors.

In the previous debate format, each candidate could expound upon his/her own strengths and vision for our schools with both an opening statement and a closing statement. Under this meet & greet thing, the candidates are NOT ALLOWED to speak of their own strengths and vision...there will be NO OPENING or CLOSING STATEMENTS! You should be curious, no, suspicious of who is hiding what, of who is afraid of what.

I have my own thoughts, but you asked for no dirty laundry. One person's dirty laundry could be the Emperor's New Clothes, to another person!

My only advice to anyone sincerely interested in getting at the facts would be to remain very wary of the 800-pound gorilla in the room, or at least don't pay any attention to that gorilla's roaring and chest-thumping. All noise and show.

Good luck, Cathy!

Chris Wendt

[cathy]

I wanted to thank you for your response. I ended up not being able to go as my husband had to work really late that night.