ETEA Candidates' Night

You know, I'm fortunate and appreciative in being invited to these ETEA sponsored events for the last few years by Mr. Bowden, President of the ETEA. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend tonight's meeting. But I did tune in to the live FaceBook broadcast when I could and then watched the whole thing later on.

I think this is another way to get to know the candidates running for the Board of Ed and to be better informed before going into the voting booth. So you should all take the time to watch the broadcast.

As a general rule, I understand that these events are put on by the ETEA and the questions put forth are what the Union Leadership thinks are most important for its members to hear from the candidates - which is what they should do. No problem there. It's their meeting, they can do what they want.

Overall though, I'm a little disappointed with this one. Though the questions covered such things as a new super, basic building maintenance and overcrowding, security, bullying and shared services to name a few, I found they left out a bunch of important substantive topics reflecting the reality of today - like the politicization of the board, the lack of oversight, the ability to communicate effectively and to make cogent and persuasive argument of important board issues, the ineffective and inefficient spending of $251 million budgets, the lack of transparency on the board and the possibility of moving the elections back to April given the current state of affairs.

Further, I found some of the lead up by the moderator to the questions to be more substantive (albeit sometimes funny) than the questions themselves. Also, found it a tad bit wrong and unfair to allow current board members to question the candidates. That should of never happened. In addition, it might of been helpful if they had said that Paul Distefano withdrew from the election as they announced the candidates. Some people may not know that as yet.

As for me, I didn't get much from this Candidates' Night but it's another source for you to get to see who said what about what.



Anyhoo, no matter who you decide to vote for - please take the time to get informed in any possible way that you can and Vote.