Making the best school board

An Education reform group is quizzing potential school board members on their views of school choice. They feel many people are only elected based on name recognition, but they want them to be elected based on the issues only. They strongly support school choice and feel the school board should also support such an idea. The reform group then made recommendations as to which candidate best fits into a school choice supporter. This type of group would be a great asset to any school district.
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One issue means the world to a group of Frederick County parents this election season.
Members of Frederick Education Reform, a collective of parents who organized last winter, want new Frederick County Board of Education members to believe in school choice.
The crux of the group's philosophy is that many educational challenges, including curriculum content and teaching technique, can be addressed with more choices in public education, such as charter schools.
Frederick County is home to Maryland's first charter school -- Monocacy Valley Montessori Public Charter School.
In Maryland, charter schools are created as part of public school systems and provided funding through their annual budgets.
Tom Neumark, the group's spokesman, said members are looking for Board of Education candidates who support school choice in Frederick County -- namely charter schools.
"I'm really hoping that this year's Board of Education campaign will really be about issues, important issues" Neumark said. "Too often these elections are decided by name recognition."
Twelve school board candidates are competing in today's primary election, which will reduce the field to six who will compete for three open seats in the Nov. 4 general election.
In preparation for the primary, Neumark and other parents sent a questionnaire to the candidates in the school board race.
They subsequently interviewed 10 of the candidates who responded to the questionnaire. The group made election recommendations based on those interviews.
Candidates were identified as supporting public school reform, against reform or not clearly in support of or against reform.