Three of the five candidates in the April 1 election for the Burlington Area School District Board of Education participated in a forum Wednesday, March 19.
The forum, sponsored by the Burlington Standard Press, WIN Media and the Burlington Community Fund, was held at Veterans Terrace. A video recording of the forum is available below.
Incumbent Bill Campbell and newcomers Jim Berndt and Todd Terry provided platform statements and answered a series of questions during the forum. The two other candidates — incumbent Rosanne Hahn and newcomer Bob Lemken — chose not participate due to scheduling conflicts. Both, however, submitted platform statements that were read at the forum. A sixth candidate, Catherine Thielen, has withdrawn from the race but her name remains on the ballot.
A video player with the recorded forum appears below. The recording is approximately 75 minutes long.
[embedit snippet=”webstream-of-basd-candidate-forum”]
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Where do the questions come from for this forum?
Who decides what gets asked and what doesn’t.
A lot of questions were about extra curricular activities and sports funding and not many about academic issues and elevating academic standards.
With all of the budget cutting and poor economic times, maybe we should be asking the question of is it time to have the sports programs be taken over by the private sector so we can let our schools concentrate on academics, which is the real purpose of school education.
Other communities have sports programs run by the private sector with great success. Waukesha’s youth Hockey program is an example. In that environment, everyone that wants to play hockey…..plays hockey. No favoritism, no special dispensation to star athletes. Those that play, pay. No sporting facilities to maintain, etc. etc. It takes a big bite off of the taxpayers as well.
Think about it!
Thanks for taking the time to read this.