The four candidates for the Kettering Board of Education met on October 25 in a public forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. It is the only public meeting scheduled for the entire election season. Two of the candidates — Lori Simms and Jim Trent — are incumbents seeking reelection. Their challengers are Jim Ambrose and Frank Spolrich.
The battery on little Sony “bloggie” camera only lasted for 20 minutes of video. Had I been using my brains I would have brought the cord to attach the camera to an electrical outlet. But the 20 minutes of video does give each of the candidates a chance to introduce him or her self and gives a viewer a chance to gain some insight into the personality of each.
By running out of battery power, I missed the best part of the program — the discussion about SB5, Issue 2, and the concluding remarks of each candidate. I write about the Issue 2 discussion here. I felt that Lori Simms was particularly strong in her concluding remarks, speaking of the four points of the district’s improvement plan, and I’m sorry I don’t have the video. All the candidates, I felt, showed strong points.
These local elections give evidence that we all should be concerned about the state of our democracy. In Kettering, at the last Board of Education election, about 18,000 votes were cast, out of 41,000 possible. With so little pertinent information, how did these 18,000 decide how to vote?
The task of informing the public concerning their choices concerning a school board is much more important to the safety and future of our society than what the resources allocated to that task would indicate. Here in Kettering, there was one public meeting organized and one very amateur and incomplete You-tube produced.
The joke on “The Simpsons” is that Homer works at the local nuclear power plant and that everyone working there are lazy buffoons. The joke is that something of such importance, something with the capacity to produce a dreadful catastrophe is treated with such nonchalance. But the mechanism of our democracy is also treated with nonchalance. And we are surprised that our society seems bent on going over a cliff?
I’m glad there is a League of Women Voters that is making an effort. Here are the videos.
I couldn’t watch the 2nd and 3rd video, I got the message “The video is private.”
Rob — Yikes. Sorry for the inconvenience. Of course, I meant for all videos to be public. Thanks for alerting me of my error. I was out of town when I read your message and discovered that You-tube won’t allow an iPad user to change the status of a video, so, now that I’m back home, I made the change.