To Ask Five Jeffco Board Candidates About Key Education Positions

Earlier this week Ed News Colorado reported that five Jefferson County residents have stepped forward to fill the school board vacancy left by departing Scott Benefield:

Here are the candidates:

* Harvey Burns of Westminster retired from the district is 2004 after 30 years as an English teacher and librarian. He works as a substitute teacher. He was an officer of the Jefferson County Education Association and served on the board of the Colorado Education Association in the middle 1990s.
* Edward Duran of Arvada is vice president of an information technology company.
* Tomas Griego of Westminster is a retired middle school teacher and middle and high school administrator. After retirement he worked as a hearing officer in the Westminster schools. Most of his career was as assistant principal of Hodgkins Middle School in the Westminster district.
* Robin Johnson of Arvada is the mother of three children in the Jeffco schools and has been a school volunteer and active in the Jeffco PTA. She works as an administrative assistant in an accounting firm.
* Cody McNutt of Arvada is a graduate of the International Baccalaureate program at Lakewood High School, currently is a senior at the University of Denver and is executive director of the Arvada Harvest Festival.

These people are vying for a position on the Board of Education of Colorado’s largest school district. Therefore, I want to know where they stand on some key issues. So I Google searched all five of their names and found no substantive clues. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Since the replacement will be appointed by the existing board and not elected by the voting public, we will learn more from the interview session at the special board meeting this Monday, August 10, from 5:30 to 8:30 PM, just down the street from my friends in the Education Policy Center at the Jeffco administration building.

But whether or not I’m able to make it to the meeting, here’s just a few of the things I want to know what each of the five candidates would do:

But what are the chances we could really expect one or all of these questions to come up next Monday?