School board forum planned

School paper to host candidates’ town hall

If you’ve ever wanted to meet, greet, or grill the 10 candidates running for seats on the North Penn school board, Wednesday night will be your

chance.

North Penn High School’s Knight Crier newspaper will host a public questionand-answer town hall forum featuring those candidates next Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. at the high school.

“It’s going to be a completely student-run event, and the school board elections will affect you more directly than any other election going on,” said Knight Crier Editor-inChief Anissa Gardizy.

“If you’re going to get involved in an election, this is the one, and you should be informed before you vote,” she said.

The candidate town hall grew out of the Knight Crier’s coverage of the 2016 presidential election last fall, which Gardizy said drew plenty of interest from her fellow students — and led her to realize the off-year elections receive much less attention.

“Last year, we wrote so many articles following the presidential election, even up to a month later. Everyone was really into it, and I realized a lot of people pay attention to the presidential election, they get really heated about it, really passionate about it,” she said.

“But when it comes to the local elections, no one’s really interested. At that point, I couldn’t name everyone on our school board, and I knew most of my friends couldn’t either,” Gardizy said. On the ballot Nov. 7 will be five seats on North Penn’s school board, and incumbent Republicans Frank O’Donnell, Josie Charnock and Pat McGee, and newcomers Tom Mancini and Michelle Rupp will be running as the self-proclaimed “Quality Education Matters” ticket against a Democratic slate called “North Penn Neighbors for Progress” that consists of candidates Christian Fusco, Jonathan Kassa, Jenna Ott, Tina Stoll, and Mark Warren. Rupp and Ott will be vying for a two-year term for a seat held by Carolyn Murphy until her death in December 2016, and the rest are seeking four-year terms.

The candidate town hall will feature both groups of five candidates, each fielding and responding to questions selected by students and submitted by members of the public, which Gardizy said was designed to give the public as much input as possible.

“I thought, ‘There should be an emphasis put on local elections,’ and we needed journalists to put on a town hall, so people in the community would have the opportunity to get information about the candidates,” she said.

“We, as the Knight Crier staff, we decided that since we’re young journalists, we should make an effort to lead a town hall, so people can get information about the candidates,” Gardizy said.

Ten topics have been selected by Knight Crier staff, and submitted questions must fall within one of those topics: the district’s budget, charter schools and/or vouchers, facilities, taxes, diverse population, school and class size, drug use/ safety, full-day kindergarten, inclusion and innovation. The tropics were chosen based on Knight Crier staff’s examination of the two teams’ platforms and coverage of local issues, and Gardizy said students will moderate the questions and subsequent discussions.

“We have questions prepared for every issue, but if there’s a community question that could replace it, we’re open to that,” she said.

Each question will be posed to one group of candidates, which will pick one member to give a twominute answer, and the opposite group will then have one minute to respond. If discussion continues, both sides would then have an extra minute to respond to each other, all timed and moderated by Knight Crier students.

“If we have a good conversation going on, we can let it ride a little bit, but we have to adhere to around five minutes for discussions, since we only have 90 minutes,” Gardizy said.

Ten topics have been selected by Knight Crier staff, and submitted questions must fall within one of those topics: the district’s budget, charter schools and/ or vouchers, facilities, taxes, diverse population, school and class size, drug use/safety, fullday kindergarten, inclusion and innovation.

Questions can be submitted in person until 6:45 p.m. that night, or online by emailing Knightcrier@Npenn.org with a question and your name and town. For those who can’t attend, the town hall will be broadcast live by student North Penn Television (NPTV) crews on local Comcast Channel 28 and Verizon Channel 29, live streamed at www.NorthPennNews.org and posted afterward on NPTV’s online channels.

“For anyone considering coming, I would definitely make the effort to make it on Wednesday night,” Gardizy said. “I definitely think, after Wednesday, our Knight Crier staff will realize what a great opportunity it was for the staff and community. I could definitely see this reoccurring, and going into other things beside the school board.”

The North Penn school board candidate forum will be held at 7 p.m. Oct. 18 at North Penn High School, 1340 S. Valley Forge Road, Towamencin. For more information visit www.KnightCrier.org, search for “The Knight Crier” on Facebook or follow @NPKnightCrier on Twitter.