ARE THESE QUESTIONS YOU WOULD LIKE THE CANDIDATES TO ANSWER? QUESTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE SCHOOL BOARD

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Tom Salmon

Here are the questions we sent to the candidates running to serve on the Prince William County School Board. Note that the form (2019 County school board survey–Family Alliance) allows three answers: support, oppose, or undecided. When candidates respond, most insert a few comments in their replies to our questionnaire. We post the complete response, including comments, online. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, we cannot include comments in our voter guides. So we strive to avoid ambiguity.

Indicate whether you support, oppose or are undecided on the proposals below with an X after your choice:

  1. Increase the share of county revenues going to education.
  2. Start high school classes later than those for elementary and middle school.
  3. Permit students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity, even if inconsistent with their biological sex.
  4. Hire retired police as armed security guards for elementary schools.
  5. Allow students to attend off-premises religious education twice a week.
  6. Accelerate pay increases for teachers in the first five years of teaching to promote retention.
  7. Endorse legislation to offer tax relief for tuition expenses incurred by parents of nonpublic school students.
  8. Alter sex education curriculum to increase awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ relationships.
  9. Allow home school students to try out for high school sports, music and ROTC.
  10. Use only abstinence-based sex education curricula.
  11. Seek legislation allowing school boards to levy taxes for educational purposes.
  12. Notify parents of counseling on suicide, depression, drug use, pregnancy & contraception.
    Support
  13. Require parents’ permission prior to teaching sex education to their children.
  14. Offer more career and technical education classes.
  15. Retain “school based management” to increase accountability to parents.
  16. Accord student expression of religious views the same freedom as all other speech.
  17. Oppose new residential development until permanent classrooms replace trailers.
  18. Increase funding for mental health services at rate equal to funding to hire more teachers.
  19. Rigorously enforce criteria for promotion to next grade level.
  20. Encourage ESL students to take courses taught in English as soon as feasible.
  21. Pay the school superintendent no less than the highest paid county official.
  22. Offer courses about the history, beliefs and literature of various religions.
  23. Permit religious clubs to use facilities or announce activities on the same basis as all other student groups.
  24. Require students & teachers to use pronouns to fit a person’s gender identity, instead of biology.

Interesting questions? Relevant? With respect to each question, would you like to know the position of each candidate for the School Board? Then please contact the candidates competing to represent you and let them know.

Who has not responded to our questionnaire?

Chairman

Brentsville District

Coles District

Gainesville District

Neabsco District

Occoquan District

Please thank the following candidates for responding to our questionnaire. Why? Read WOULD YOU BUY A PIG IN A POKE? — THE 2019 EDITION.

Chairman

  • Stanley Bender — E-Mail Address: stanley.bender2@gmail.com; Phone: 703-380-4406

Brentsville District

Coles District

Gainesville District

What’s our deadline? To get our voter guides printed and distributed in time, we must have candidate responses by October 11th. Otherwise, we will have to discern candidate positions as well as we can based upon their public statements and votes on the School Board.

When will we post the responses we have to our candidate questionnaires? We will post the responses when we start distributing our voter guides to local area churches.

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3 Responses to ARE THESE QUESTIONS YOU WOULD LIKE THE CANDIDATES TO ANSWER? QUESTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE SCHOOL BOARD

  1. scatterwisdom says:
    October 6, 2019 at 7:26 am

    Wonder how many school board members would would be elected if every member and/or applicant was required to answer your questionnaire in writing?.

    Wise questionnaire to help voters decide and/or become more aware of what their children are being exposed to when they send them off to school to be educated, or indoctrinated?.

    Regards and goodwill bogging.

    • Tom Salmon says:
      October 6, 2019 at 8:03 am

      @scatterwisdom

      The term “indoctrination” has a bad connotation these days, but we all send our children to school to be indoctrinated. The question is in what do we send them to be indoctrinated. Is it for the good of our children or not?

      By itself the questionnaire is not a solution. If nothing else, some politicians will lie. However, the questionnaire is a start. We need to investigate the people we vote for, and the news media does not help much.

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