Fairfax school board
It occurred to me earlier today that tomorrow is election day and I still hadn’t figured out who I was voting for in the school board election. There are 8 people running for the 3 at-large seats, and I didn’t have a good sense for the issues or the personalities. It’s a non-partisan election, but the parties do endorse candidates.
So I started looking at the endorsements.
The Post endorsed Moon, Braunlich, and Cooper.
The teacher’s union endorsed Hone, Hunt, and Moon.
The Connection newspapers endorsed Cooper, Hone, Moon, Hunt, and Braunlich.
SLEEP (which wants Jr High and High Schools to start later) endorsed Hunt, Hone and Moon.
Fairfax Democrats endorsed Moon, Hone and Raney
Stop Redistricting endorsed Braunlich, Hunt, and Raney.
After reading the endorsements and looking at some of the websites, I think I’ve made my choices — Moon, Hone, and Cooper.
I haven’t figured out why the Dems endorsed Raney — his website just sounds like he’s drunk the management consulting kool-aid (everything is couched in terms of the "business case). I seriously considered Hunt, as I do think it’s important for the board to be more than an echo chamber for the schools administration, but just couldn’t get past his letter to all the principals recommending ex-gay videos.
And I don’t really know all the issues around redistricting, but it seems like a mistake to take it off the table as an option. Yes, redistricting can be traumatic. But boundary lines weren’t handed down to Moses on tablets. I’m almost certainly biased from our experience at D’s old school, but my perception of anti-redistricting advocates is that they’re trying to keep what they have, and tough luck to anyone else.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I peruse the endorsements, but never vote based on them. It seems our local papers choose candidates based on self-interest rather than based on issues. It is a relief not to have to vote for school board members or referendums this election. The focus is on our town council and it is cut throat. The scathing and polarizing newspaper articles rival the presidential election. You think the reporters had FBI or CIA files on candidates.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I looked through my ballots yesterday and got frustrated. We have lots of referendums/initiatives/whatevers; I fundamentally hate voting on these issues, which are really legislative, and cannot effectively be voted on through initiative.
An example is an attempt at a compromise transportation measure that tries to group together the advocates of public transit & roads construction. The result: environmental public transit folks hate it and the roads folks hate it (oh and the anti-tax folks, who hate everything). We have pages and pages of these impenetrable and complicated initiatives and I hate trying to make an informed decision on the things I want to the elected officials to do.
I also am not very happy about voting on school board elections. When it comes down to it I like my representative democracy to be very representative (the federal model). I want to be able to elect people who have power to make decisions, and let them make the decisions, and not try to look over their shoulders reviewing every decision.
OK, clearly I’m ranting, and have pretty strong opinions that presumably aren’t shared by everyone.
If I lived in your area, Elizabeth, I’d be tempted to just vote as you did. But, you probably don’t post endorsements for my neck of the woods :-).
bj