On Thursday, May 12, the Saratoga County League of Women Voters moderated a two-hour event focused on introducing the eight board of education candidates to the community, and providing each candidate equal time to respond to questions and provide opening and closing remarks.
The candidates are (in order as they appear on the ballot): Michele Draves, Emily Walsh, David Mitchell, David Barclay II, Jennifer Longtin (incumbent), Ben Riehlman, Tom Bird, and Melissa Barone.
Residents are being asked to vote on the 2022-23 school budget and elect TWO candidates to the BH-BL Board of Education on Tuesday, May 17. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the gym at BH-BL High School, 88 Lakehill Rd.
The Meet-the-Candidates Night was a live broadcast from the high school’s TV Studio and also live streamed to the district’s YouTube channel. High School students Ben Jewell, Elyse Rogers, Simon Rieffel, and Sophia Fantauzzi from the Broadcasting Club (with assistance from the Matt Mascelli, Andrew Wildrick and Brandon Oleksak in the technology department) worked behind the scenes ensuring the lighting, audio, video, set up, graphic overlays, and camera angles were professional and high quality. [CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE MEET-THE-CANDIDATES NIGHT RECORDING]
Given the large number of candidates and limited space for a live audience, the League of Women Voters asked BH-BL residents to submit their questions ahead of time. More than 55 questions were submitted with several being directed to individual candidates. Because Meet-the-Candidates Night format is focused on every candidate being given equal time to share their views, goals, and opinions on various topics, the person-specific questions were emailed to the individual candidates.
The League of Women Voters reviewed and vetted the 55-plus questions, categorized them by topic, and wove similar questions together to create a list of 10 questions with various topics to present to the candidates. In a two-hour event, the candidates were able to respond to a total of eight questions. Below is the list of questions organized by the League of Women Voters as well as the complete list of questions submitted by residents.
2022 Meet-the-Candidates Night Questions
- What are the greatest issues that have impacted our school district as a result of Covid, and how can the board address these issues?
- As a board member, you will need to consider federal and state guidelines, or rules and regulations, when making decisions. How will you gather information on the issues, best practices, and guidance to effectively carry out your duty, regardless of your political persuasion?
- What does the concept of parental choice in education mean to you?
- Should the school board follow the lead of some neighboring districts and implement anti-racist and implicit bias training for all teachers?
- As a school board member, how would you prioritize and provide leadership toward the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our school district?
- If you were to be elected as a BHBL board member, how would you advocate for and support more options for keeping our children safe in school, considering the rise in mental health crises and national concerns about school violence?
- What are your thoughts of the role of schools in teaching comprehensive sex education and the proposed sex-ed bills in NYS government?
- What is your position on sitting board member attendance requirements?
- You may have seen that the National School Board asked the FBI to investigate parents who speak at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.” What is your opinion on this issue and should the board speak out against it?
- What are your thoughts on banning books?
IF TIME PERMITS
- Do you support the efforts of the BHBL teachers’ union?
- What could the board do to better support families who were impacted by the 2019 elimination of the religious exemption for vaccinations in NYS and were forced to homeschool.
- When discussing data-driven decision making, which sources do you consider reliable?
- As a board member, what will you do if the Governor mandates the COVID-19 shot for children in our district?
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY COMMUNITY
Curriculum-related
- Will you support comprehensive sex education within the district, recognizing the across-the-board failures of abstinence only policies?
- What is your position on currently proposed “sex ed” bills circulating our NYS chambers? If passed, I believe many of these new curriculum requirements will result in additional division within our district and community, and will result in withdrawal of students from BHBL. How will you stand to prevent this?
- Can you share with us your opinion on the School Board’s involvement in reviewing and approving of external programs purchased by the district that are advocating for changes in sex, gender, and race education for elementary school students (Amaze.org, Second Step, etc)?
- Do you feel that social emotional learning has a place in public education? Please explain your position with specific details and how you came to that position.
- Many of our candidates are running because of supposed problems that they see in how the district is handling SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and CRT (Critical Race Theory). Please provide specific examples of how you feel the district is improperly implementing curriculum as related to SEL and CRT.
- Throughout our Nation, State and the BHBL School District, the general public, especially parents, are very concerned about Critical Race Theory (CRT), Sex Education related to grades K-3, and mandating COVID vaccines and masks. What is each candidates’ position on those 3 topics?
- What is your position on CRT being introduced into our schools?
- What is you opinion on Florida’s Parental Right’s in Education Bill that prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade and prohibits instruction that is not age appropriate for students, and that requires school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being?
- What are your thoughts on banning books?
- Is there any book on any BHBL library you would ban/remove from shelves if you had the choice? If so, what is that book title(s) and why?
- At this time, nationally school boards, school administrators, teachers and school nurses are under increasing pressure from special interest groups to modify curriculum. This includes removing books, modifying or limiting facts and information, or eliminating courses all together. My question to all the candidates is: How would you support your administration, faculty and staff (including health staff) to fulfill public health requirements in order to continue the excellence of instruction, the reasonable budgets, and the measured response to perhaps unreasonable outside pressure that has been the philosophy of BH-BL from Kindergarten through high school?
Board of Education, in General
- Can you tell us how you have been involved with the Board of Education and School Administration on some of the challenges facing our students and staff over the last year?
- What is your position on sitting Board member attendance requirements? Currently, no policy exists pertaining to strict attendance rules, or removal for lack of attendance. Will you support writing/passing such policies?
- Being elected to the board and representing the voters of the community is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. Attendance at the meetings and engagement is of critical importance, especially during the last two years of COVID. Approximately how many meetings have you attended over the last year, and if elected to the board do you feel it is the responsibility of a board member to regularly attend meetings and engage in discussions/advocate for the voters of the district?
- Some of you have not attended board meetings or very few of them, why does the board benefit from your time now and goals you have for our district?
What is the Board’s role in participating in our legislative process at the NYS level? Or that of “mandates” that bypass such legislative process? As bills are proposed, it is incumbent upon schools to be fully aware of their content, and provide district-level feedback TO the authors of those proposals. - In the past, the board of education has been able to stand above politics. I believe that the NSBA letter of September 2021, addressed to the President of the United States, signaled a new reality for school boards: They can no longer remain aloof from politics. Topics like gender identity, white supremacy, systemic racism, and children being strained as “social change agents” are political in nature. As a board member would you support the board in political efforts such as lobbying or letter writing to state or national authorities to preserve the integrity of our current education system?
- As a board member, you will need to consider federal and state guidelines, or rules and regulations, so will you invest your time reading up on the issues, best practices, and guidance to effectively carry out your duty, regardless of who the governor is or what your political persuasion is?
- You may have seen how the National School Board asked the FBI to investigate parents who speak at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists”. What is your opinion on this issue?
COVID-related
- Covid is still out there. While we are in a much better spot than we were in 2020, we’re still dealing with a virus that has killed over a million people in the US and has messed up God knows how many people’s immune systems. Seeing as the virus is still prevalent, with Upstate NY having some of the highest infection numbers in the Country, and as we are still learning the long term effects of covid, if elected to the board what do the candidates plan on doing to ensure that the health of BHBL students, staff, and faculty is as protected as can be?
- Please share with us what you intend to do if the Governor mandates the COVID-19 shot for children in our district.
- What is your position and opinion on the potential law requiring a vaccine mandate for school age children to attend public schools?
- A recent BH-BL community survey highlighted a significant number of definite or likely “withdrawal from school” if Covid Vaccine becomes a requirement. What will you do to prevent such a requirement at BHBL and the subsequent loss of students and funding that will follow?
- Hindsight being 20/20, if the masks were mandated again, by the CDC and DOH, what would your response be?
- What is your position on mask mandates following numerous speakers informing the board of the debilitating emotional and mental consequences they had on the children over the past two years? (These speakers included members of the community, parents, guidance counselors and social workers.)
How do you personally think the school district handled the previous two years during covid? What could they have done better?
Diversity
- How will you encourage diversity in education and within the curriculum?
As a school board member, how would you prioritize and provide leadership toward the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our school district? Please offer your specific ideas related to recruitment, hiring, training, mentorship, curriculum, activities, social supports, and funding for district students and staff of varied races, ethnicities, linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, genders, and sexual orientations. - Should the school board follow the lead of some neighboring districts and implement anti-racist and implicit bias training for all teachers?
- What are your feelings regarding transgender students at bhbl?
- How would you plan to be sure that students from a background different from your own would receive equal education and opportunities to grow and learn and feel included in our district?
- How do you envision inclusion of all students, and how would [you help] educate other students about differences while increasing the focus on similarities?
Miscellaneous: Parent Choice, Election Guidelines, Attendance at BOE Meetings, Board Changes, Homeschool Support, Feedback, School Safety
- Do you support the efforts of the BHBL teachers union?
- Mailers were sent out to district residents by the BH-BL Teachers’ Association supporting 2 of the 8 candidates running for the 2 open board positions. The return address on the mailers was the address for the high school. Receipt of these mailers from the high school address gives many folks the impression that the school district also supports the 2 named candidates. It is not clear from the mailers that the Teachers’ Association is a separate and distinct entity from the school district. Do you think the BH-BL Teachers’ Association should be publicly and aggressively supporting individual candidates in this manner?
- Do you feel it is appropriate for the Teacher’s Association, to not only back a Board candidate, but to be actively politicking for them? Do you feel that is a conflict of interest as the Board of Education could potentially veto disciplinary action against a teacher by the Superintendent?
- Do you think that it’s a conflict of interest for the NYSUT or the Teachers’ Association to endorse candidates and use their funding to promote said candidates? If so, how would you deal with this? If not, why?
- Please share how you make yourself available to concerned citizens and your track record for responding to people’s questions and concerns.
- If you were to be elected as a BHBL board member would you advocate for and support more options for keeping the children secure including such things as metal detectors at the schools as a possible deterrent for students bringing weapons in their bags considering the rise in mental health crisis and past school related student shootings throughout the country?
- What ideas do you have to lead our district to become more ecologically sustainable? Please comment on improvements to infrastructure, energy use, transportation, and waste management, as well as any other areas you can identify.
- What are your views on homeschooling and what can we do as a district to support the families? (We are all taxpayers to the district.)
- Please share what you will do to better support families who were impacted by the 2019 elimination of the religious exemption in NYS and were forced to homeschool.
- When discussing data-driven decision making, which sources do you consider reliable?
- Much has been made nationally – especially after the election of the Virginia governor – of “parents rights” in schools. What’s your take on that issue and how do you rate the professional administrators and teachers in the BHBL district regarding feedback from parents?
- Stats provided by the Association of School Boards show BHBL to be the top-ranked high school in Saratoga County and in the top 1% in NY State. What changes would you try to make if you are elected to the board?
- Is there a limit on your beliefs of parental choice, and how might you as a potential board member walk that line to support policies that might help avoid a catastrophe like what happened in Oxford, Michigan?
- Can you share with us how you have advocated for the rights of children and parents over the last year?