School board candidate forum

August 18, 2008 7:07 am by

The Portland Public Schools board of education has arranged a candidate forum, moderated by the League of Women Voters of Portland, according to a letter to the five candidates.

The forum will be next Tuesday, August 26 in the board room at BESC, and televised live on cable channel 28.

Candidates will be given two minutes to give an opening statement, in which they are expected to address two points: “1) While Board members must reside in a geographic zone, they are sworn to represent the entire district. If nominated, how do you intend to balance that? 2) Do you intend to run for election to the seat next spring? Why or why not?”

After opening statements, a League of Women Voters moderator will ask each candidate questions covering the following five topics:

  1. equity among schools,
  2. funding,
  3. K-8 schools,
  4. parent involvement, and
  5. the achievment gap.

Candidates will have 60-90 seconds to give their answers to the questions from the moderator.

After questions from the moderator, existing board members will have the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, or questions on other topics.

With the entire forum is scheduled for one hour, it is difficult to imagine much depth of discussion. But then again, if the rumors are true that they’ve already chosen their man, there’s no point wasting any more time than that.

The Oregonian is interviewing candidates this week, but it is unknown whether they will publish their endorsement before the forum.

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Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

filed under: School Board

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5 Responses

  1. Comment from Peter Campbell:
    August 19th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    Anyone who can substantively address equity among schools, funding, K-8 schools, parent involvement, and the achievement gap in 60 to 90 second fragments is either an auctioneer or spinmeister. Why not ask the candidates to submit answers to questions in advance of the forum, share these responses with the public, and have the board and the moderators ask the candidates for follow-up responses? They could better use the 60 to 90 seconds for clarification on points already made. And the responses would serve as public documents that the public could respond to.

    Speaking of which — so there’s no opportunity for the public to ask questions??

  2. Comment from Steve Rawley:
    August 19th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Peter, you assume they haven’t already chosen their guy. Why waste more than an hour if they already know who they want?

    Re. public discussion, I think they’ve scheduled a meeting the following Thursday to publicly deliberate (what a concept!). Maybe they’ll have a couple three minute slots for public comment then.

    (There’s been no official notice of the Thursday meeting.)

  3. Comment from Lakeitha:
    August 20th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    The official notice will probably go out on Monday morning to the PPS Key Communicators list.

  4. Comment from Juande Ramos:
    August 21st, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    Notice for both meetings published today:

    http://www.board.pps.k12.or.us/.docs/pg/10496

  5. Comment from Steve Rawley:
    August 22nd, 2008 at 8:13 am

    Thanks, Juande.

    I also posted about this yesterday.

    (Go Tottenham!)