Cheshire Board of Education Candidate Forum 2013

I went to the BOE candidate forum last night. Boy was I disappointed. The forum was supposed to have gone from 7pm till 9pm. They asked questions of the candidates from 7pm till 7:50pm. They didn't even ask all questions of all candidates. Five of the seven questions were answered by only two candidates each. What a joke.

The Cheshire Townwide PTA runs the forum. They collect questions from people and combine the questions on topics. Two of the questions I submitted were:

1. Given the fact that Connecticut has not received any Race to the Top funds from the federal government that would make implementing the Common Core standards a requirement, and the more important fact that Connecticut is a “local control” state for the school boards, meaning that each town can take or leave curriculum that the state suggests, how do you feel about Cheshire going forward with implementing the Common Core Standards?

2. In implementing Common Core, Cheshire has agreed to the increased need for testing that comes along with it, and since these tests are now nationalized, the curriculum must be aligned to it. And, in agreeing to use Common Core, states may not eliminate even one, but can only add up to 15% supplemental material. How do you feel about this potential loss of town control over our curriculum? 

The only question actually asked about Common Core was watered down to:

How do you see the Common Core curriculum supporting the new demands of the technological world our children will inhabit?

Really?

Why had it not occurred to me before that the Townwide PTA that was running this thing was likely aligned with the National PTA on its position (pdf) about Common Core? A quick chat with the Townwide PTA President confirmed it for me after the meeting. So the Cheshire Townwide PTA couldn't keep their own politics out of what was supposed to be an open forum.

Luckily though, there was one candidate, Adam Grippo, who was definitely anti-CC in his message. After the meeting I spent a few minutes chatting with him, and he assured me that that is the case. We spoke about the referendum on Cheshire's ballot this year regarding a Technology Reserve Fund. I got the amount wrong when I spoke with him, but Cheshire is voting on whether to approve $651,000 to, among other things, "provide the ability of the... Schools to more efficiently integrate and support new and emerging technologies". We speculated on what that actually meant.

If you live in Cheshire, I hope you will vote for Adam Grippo. And if you live elsewhere in Connecticut, I hope you are going to your own town's Board of Ed forums to find out where the candidates stand on Common Core.