Candidate Questions
This is what each candidate has been, or will be sent via email.
School District Questions
School District Non-Ballot Questions
Introduction
Thank you for signing up for a elected position in this upcoming election.
No matter what position you are running for you believe that you can
make a difference for our community.
Providing the voters will a consistent format will allow them to
better understand the candidates.
Here are some details before the questions start:
1) Responses will appear verbatim given the follow the following rules:
a) If the content exceeds the limit, it will be truncated.
b) Formatting such as bold or italic will be removed.
2) Each candidate's responses will be presented using the same format.
3) Non-answered questions will cause the text "No Response" to appear.
4) If a candidate chooses not to respond at all, when their name appears
on the list, a page will be displayed stating that no response was
received.
5) Efforts will be made to contact each candidate who has not already
responded to the request for information present on the
main page.
6) Candidates addresses and phone numbers are public record, however,
this site will not be displaying that information.
Candidates may put their address in the free-formating text section
of the questions. The reasoning behind this policy is that people have
enough of a hard time keeping themselves off the internet, and this site
does not want to add to that problem. We know we are in Merrimack, we
know we can make a phone call to the Town Hall, Village District or School
Superintendent's office and get their information.
7) Candidates may optionally provide their email addresses to be
displayed but they will not be requested or listed on the site unless
the candidate specifically authorizes it.
8) Candidates will be given one opportunity to modify their responses
as they appear online. Changes requested beyond that will be done on
an as time permits basis which means they may not happen at all.
9) Candidates who responds understand that this site is not
responsible for hardware, software or any other issue which causes
the site or specific pages within the site from being available at any
given time. Problems will be addressed as they are reported and as time
permits.
General Questions
------------ The Generic Questions - Part 1 -------------- Your Name: Number of Years in Merrimack: Position you are running for: How should people contact you (email,phone...): Website: Other Offices or Community Involvement (include only title and years held): Why are you Running for Office (200 words or less): What do you hope to accomplish while in office (200 words or less): You have 500 words or less to describe anything you like that may not be covered above: Optional: Attach a picture:
School District Article Questions
Below are the follow-on questions relating to the School District articles. I will only provide a few lines of description for each article. The complete article is available at the School District website. Please respond to this email with your responses below each of the questions and please respond as soon as you can. Just like the general questions, if you go over, your response will be truncated and your response will be posted as I receive it, with no changes. The scripts that I have setup will respond with the expected Yes or No, or with any of these 'canned' responses listed below. 'No response was received from this candidate' 'Candidate responded to the questions, however did not provide an answer for this article' 'Candidate is undecided on this article' 'Candidate's response to this question is special, please view their response for details' 'Candidate is running for a position that they felt, providing a response would be inappropriate.' ---------- Same set of details were included in the email ------ ------------ School District Article Questions -------------- Your Name: Position you are running for: ---------- Article 2, Accept Gifts Voting For or Against: Rational (75 words or less): ---------- Article 3, Support Staff Contract Voting For or Against: Rational (75 words or less): ---------- Article 4, Special meeting should A3 Fail Voting For or Against: Rational (75 words or less): ---------- Article 5, 10 year lease - Ventilators Voting For or Against: Rational (75 words or less): ---------- Article 6, Rescind Budget Committee Voting For or Against: Rational (75 words or less): ---------- Article 7, 2021/2022 Budget Voting For or Against: Rational (150 words or less):
School District Non-Ballot Questions
Some History: In the past, the Exchange Club would take questions from everyone attending their Meet The Candidate event, go through them and ask each candidate. One year they ran out of time and I asked those questions using the merrimackvotes website. Where the Questions Came From: Facebook had many questions posted in several groups. I took all that I ran across put them together, and pulled out 10. Those 10 will be what will be presented on the vote2021 site in a comparison form. The rest of the questions I pulled from Facebook are listed below the 10th question. If you feel you want to answer one of those questions please email me an updated candidate statement so I can get it on the site. I feel that this allows you to review ALL the questions and if you feel one strongly about one of them and want the chance to answer it, you can add it to your candidate statement. Again, Thanks for running for office. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1) What is your stance on travel and quarantine policy? Do we make up our own school policy or do we follow what the CDC and DHHS has a current policy and keep up to date with them. ----------------- 2) What is your stance on continuing the REAL academy for those who cannot safely return to school or choose not to until there is a vaccine for children. School Board Governance: ----------------- 3) What is the role of the School Board and what differences do you see with their role versus the role of administration? ----------------- 4) What are your thoughts about full-day kindergarten? ----------------- 5) What are your thoughts on college and career readiness? ----------------- 6) What are your thoughts on Vocational programs and how would you improve the programs what we have now? ----------------- 7) What are your thoughts on ELO's (extended learning opportunities)? ----------------- 8) Do you find value in benchmarking us against other districts and if so, how? ----------------- 9) Please share your thoughts on how Merrimack is currently doing working with students who have additional and special needs, and if you see any changes that should be made, etc. ----------------- 10) If there is a budget cut, what would you cut first? Below are the rest of the questions that I will NOT be collecting your answers for directly. You can choose to respond to these questions in your Why Am I Running section if you choose. Questions Removed: ------------------- For candidates, if you could choose ONLY ONE of the following statements to describe your candidacy, which would it be? A - My goal is to raise academic performance while ensuring our students are mentally and socially prepared to be independent citizens. This is an important investment of taxpayer dollars. B -As a school board member, I will work hard to make sure we are running our schools as cost-effectively as possible while meeting the minimum state standards. C -A school board member is most effective when they enable the success and support school district administration to run the district in line with their professional judgement. --------------- Can you tell us about a time where you had proposed or presented an idea to a group and that idea was met with strong opposition? - Were you able to get your idea implemented ? - How did you go about getting by in from the opposers? --------------- What in your opinion are the top two priorities facing the Merrimack School District in the next year? --------------- What are the top two priorities in the next three years? --------------- What capital projects are needed for the district, and what would you support? --------------- Will you follow the will of the voters, as long as it follows the law, by adhering to poll results? --------------- How would you propose to identify what competencies the professional developmental curriculum would address. --------------- Do you believe Merrimack should encourage students to go to neighboring CTE (Career Tech Education) programs? --------------- What are your thoughts on formative and summative assessment? --------------- What do you know about tiers of intervention? --------------- How much of the professional development budget would you allocate for teachers ? --------------- Do you, as a candidate for the Merrimack School Board, intend to support staff training in Critical Race Theory and incorporation of it into the curriculum in our schools? --------------- Please share your thoughts about the district's decision to phase in students going back to school (K-4 back as of 3/15) and 5-12 pending SB decision on 3/30. --------------- If Article 6 passes and the Budget Committee is disbanded, how do you think that would change the School Board's budget process? --------------- What are your thoughts on Merrimack's foreign language program? --------------- Please share your thoughts about the district supporting remote learning in the fall for those families who don't want to send their students back until vaccines are available for children. -------------- What are your thoughts on the professional development of our teachers ? What can we do differently ? What's working ? --------------- Will you open up board meetings to more direct public participation and make an effort to respond to questions there and then? -------------- How do you improve the graduation rate and what will you do about high school drop-out rates?