I helped put one of these together a few years back when we actually had 4 people running for 2 seats. Each candidate was told they would have 2 minutes (I think) to introduce themselves. We had a moderator who had some questions made up. She asked the same question to each person and they had 3 minutes to reply. After she was done her questions the audience was allowed to ask theirs. I sent flyers out to all the schools in our district and advertised in the local papers. The only reason we had the moderator use her questions was because I was concerned that the audience might not jump in right away and then everyone would look stupid. I was disappointed at the turn-out but overall it went well.
I think it's a great service to the community.
Unfortunately in our area there are very few contested seats so we did not have a Candidates Night for over 10 years. Last year, finally, we had more than one candidate vying for a seat on our Board of Education. I ran the Candidates Night. I contacted our League of Women Voters l to provide a moderater as the previous poster did. In our case, a donation of $150 was requested and since we did want to run this night,we did "pay" the donation. It was a good event though and worth it. Although,I have to say the moderator was probably somewhere in her 90"s! - lol!.
Something to do is publicize the event so everyone is aware of it and your turnout is good!
We do a meet the candidates every year in cooperation with the League of Women Voters. The LWV usually has set guidelines of how these meetings are run. Here is a quick summary:
Opening statements-candidate has alotted time (3 min) to introduce themself and their position.
Audience members ask question-each candidate has 2 min to answer each question. Every question should be answered by a different first person. ie: give each candidqate a number and the first question gets anwered in order 1-2-3, second question 2-3-1 and so on. It sounds comfusing but is more fair.
At the end, each candidate has 2-3 min for closing statement.
With our group, the LWV supplies the moderator who keeps the time and makes sure the questions are appropriate to the forum. If you have a local chapter of the LWV, give tham a call, as this has always been a free service in our area and they are very professional.
Has anyone held a "Meet the (Board of Education) Candidates" night? We are having one next week and I just wanted to ask for an idea or two on ways you handled it. Did you have questions that each candidate would answer? Or just let them say a few words about themselves and not ask any questions? I think that's the whole point of having a night to meet them - to have them answer questions and of course to also meet them. I thought it went really well last year but this year we're getting some flack on how it was done last time. I would really appreciate any and all comments asap please. We're having a PTO meeting tomorrow evening and I'd like to have some ammo! thanks, sj
