Vincent Ribas: Franklin candidate forum helpful to voters

To The Daily Sun,

I want to thank Choose Franklin for once again hosting a candidate forum this past Monday. As usual, they did an excellent job, and all the candidates who could attend demonstrated a desire to serve our community.

As a longtime resident of Ward 2, I was particularly interested in the candidates for school board in that ward, as two of those three races are contested. Here, the women stood head and shoulders above their rivals. While their opponents relied on vague generalizations, these women gave specifics that showed they had grappled with the issues the questions raised. For example, Liz Cote, responding to a question on consolidating schools, cited research that found consolidation rarely reached its intended goals and usually had a negative effect on student performance. Laurie Cass brought up the role that transient students play in making it difficult to use test scores from different years to assess student performance, praising the school system’s addition of multiple tests in the same year to track progress. Desiree McLaughlin, who is unopposed, brought up how the introduction of Google classroom had initially been difficult for parents but has blossomed into an excellent tool for transparency.

Based on what I heard at the forum, I strongly support these women, as the interests of the students are clearly foremost in their minds, and they proved they can look at data and find solutions that address the issues the data raises. If you couldn’t be at the forum, I urge you to see the recording on Choose Franklin’s website and see what the candidates in your ward had to say. And don’t forget to vote on Tuesday, Oct. 4, between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Vincent Ribas

Franklin