Hi everyone – given the level of interest in the school board candidacies, the 8th grade Good Citizen Club will host a publicly available webinar to interview candidates on Monday, February 28th, 5:30-6:30PM. We will not be using specific questions intended just for one candidate, but rather will collect questions that can be posed to every candidate. This is where you all come in – we would love to collect question ideas from community members! Please consider writing up concise questions related to the responsibilities of board members. Below is a list of the primary responsibilities of Vermont board members to help inform the development of your questions.

Please send questions either directly through Facebook messenger to Alice Dee Scannell, or email alicetdee@yahoo.com, or reply to this Front Porch Forum post. Please share your name with your question as all folks who submit questions will be thanked at the end of the webinar. You do not need to be a registered voter to submit questions, our group encourages youth voice, so all ages are welcomed to participate.

Given the breadth of topics that could be covered, the timeframe allotted, and the possible number of questions, our group will be editing and consolidating submissions to ensure as many topics as is possible can be covered and all candidates have time to respond thoughtfully. We will share out the edited and consolidated list of questions at least a day before the interviews so candidates can prepare and community members can see how their questions were incorporated.

Regarding format, the webinar forum allows participants to listen, but mics and videos will be off, with no broad chat feature. The students will be in charge of asking the questions, and doing any quick follow ups if something feels really unclear, but overall it will be a pretty straightforward question and answer experience.

We are aware of 4 candidates running for the school board. On the ballot: Tamara Revoir & Emily Kimball Aiken; Write-In Candidates: Nicole Rocheleau & Roy V. Hill II

We have all of these candidates confirmed (thank you candidates!). Please be in touch if you are running and would like to participate in this forum.

For context, the Good Citizen Challenge has been an afterschool parent-run non-partisan civics experience throughout the past 3 school years that was sponsored by Seven Days and the Vermont Community Foundation. Students completed activities each month that fell into the categories of News Literacy, History, Government and Community Engagement.

Our hope is to offer our community a unified process of engagement in a school related election, and to foster meaningful dialogue that captures multiple perspectives while strengthening understandings in the midst of differences.

The following are the primary responsibilities of Vermont school board members:
1. To establish a vision and communicate that vision to the community
2. Establish a budget to support that vision and oversight of the distribution of those funds
3. Establish policies and procedures to support the vision
4. Monitor progress and performance of the District
5. Hire a superintendent to oversee day to day operations of the district. The board is not involved in the operations of the district, set directions and priorities clearly to be executed by the superintendent
6. Act in an ethical manner and hold effective and focused meetings to facilitate making well informed decisions

Thanks for considering this event, please mark your calendars and the webinar link will be posted a few days prior to Monday, 2/28. For an additional reminder, check out the Facebook event page that is accessible to anyone, even non-users of Facebook: https://fb.me/e/2YJ30qoPU

Stay tuned and thanks for submitting questions!
Alice Scannell and the students of the Good Citizens Club

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