Calling All Candidates
Happy New Year! Mike & I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our subscribers, readers, and followers for making 2022 a fun year for The DPS Chalkboard. We look forward to an even better 2023! With that in mind, we are ready to launch our coverage of the 2023 election for the school board at Decatur Public Schools District #61.
In Mike’s most recent article So, You Want To Run For School Board, we outlined five (5) major areas & questions we feel the board of education must focus on in order to help DPS61 meet the current needs of the community. These are all centered around the work required of a board member – focusing on big picture, strategic policies instead of the daily minutia at the building and classroom levels. So, our next step is to present those questions to the eight (8) declared candidates listed on the April 4th ballot.
Our plan is to send these questions to each individual candidate and ask for their written responses to these questions (ideally no later than Feb 28th.) Once that deadline is reached, we will share out each candidate’s responses in a separate article. We will evaluate the responses and share our thoughts on what we feel is not only relevant, but whether we believe the candidate can be an effective board member. We will also include a link to the candidate’s actual responses so the readers can see exactly what we are seeing. After we have published each profile, our intent is to post a final summary and then endorse the three candidates that we feel would best serve DPS 61.
To that end, we need your help. If you personally know of a candidate’s contact information (preferably e-mail) or know someone affiliated with a campaign that could provide that information, please let us know ASAP. There are three ways you can reach us:
· Share that information by commenting directly on this Substack post
· E-mail me directly at coffeeduane623@gmail.com
· Send me the information via Messenger as this Substack article will be shared out on Facebook.
Thank you, in advance, for your help. We look forward to engaging in a thoughtful analysis and (hopefully) lively debate!