Tonight (2021-05-04) was the Public Budget Hearing and Meet the Candidates event for the Honeoye Falls-Lima School District.
The budget presentation went much as it usually does at these events. Bruce (Business and Operations) went over the budget numbers, which is also covered in the newsletter. There will be a ~$55 million budget and ~$600k bus proposal to vote up (or down). Nothing was really new from past meetings, but if you hadn’t sat through those, it was a good summary.
After that was the ‘Meet the Candidate’ portion, which started off as normal. The four candidates (Kelli Eberle, Carol Bellavia, Christopher Neff, David Goldfarb) each gave a little speech. Nothing really jumped out to me here. They all had their pros/cons, but I can’t point to anything here and say that’s why this one is great/terrible for the position. To some extent that’s good, as that should mean they can all do the job well enough. It was the questions for them where things got interesting.
Normally at one of these, there are a handful of questions, between the budget and candidates. Tonight the online platform led to more questions being asked. Which I thought was a good thing. Our elected officials (and candidates) should be available to answer questions for the public.
I thought the first three questions where very good. Both because they lent themselves to yes/no answers (even if more verbiage was used), and because of how topical they are. The candidates were asked where they stood on the capitalism/communism divide, critical race theory, and mandatory covid vaccination for students to return.
I’ll need to listen to the recording again, but I’m pretty sure the first question was more of ‘do you agree one of these ideologies has created the prosperity we enjoy, while the other has caused only suffering’. But the answers were all of the flavor ‘education on history is good’. Which was great to hear, but felt like it sidestepped the question. Eh, such is life.
The second was interesting as not everyone seemed to know what critical race theory was. Accordingly, the answers were a bit wishy-washy. If I had to boil the responses down to yes/no (and thus lose all nuance), Kelli said ‘yes, this should be taught in schools’. No one else gave clear answers, but seemed to leaning towards no.
Third question was about mandating (or advocating for) covid vaccines for students to return next year. Answers were clearer here, although the legality was mentioned and how only the State could make such a mandate. Having said that, everyone but David, while supporting people making their own choices, felt any mandate was inappropriate. David seemed to be in favor of requiring vaccines for any in person students, while the unvaccinated would continue remote learning.
There were other questions asked by the online audience, but none stood out to me like those did.
I do applaud those asking questions. Both for taking advantage of the tools provided, and for the effort to hold our elected officials accountable.
Hopefully I didn’t misrepresent anyone in my recollections. If you think I did, as alluded to above and below, there should be a recording to watch before too long. And you’ve got two weeks to figure out how you’ll vote on the budget, buses, and board members.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 04, 2021 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page. While a recording of the meeting will likely be available soon.