If you can’t make it in person to the Verona Conference of SCAs’ forum for Board of Education candidates on Thursday, October 13, at 7:30 p.m., it will be livestreamed at https://youtu.be/Tq7f9n3O4hc .
There are five candidates running for two open seats on the BOE this November:
Michael Boone, Sara Drappi, Diana Ferrera, Aaron Spiegeland, and Denise Verzella. MyVeronaNJ.com has interviewed all five and you can read their answers to our questions here.
The BOE candidates forum will be held in the Verona High School auditorium and moderated by the League of Women Voters of the Montclair Area. If you miss watching in real time, the forum video will be archived on the school district’s YouTube page. The Conference of SCAs closed question submissions for its forum on Sunday.
Verona voters should be aware that this forum did not just require questions to be submitted ahead of time, which in itself is a fairly common practice for candidate forums; the questions were vetted by a “committee of parents” who have only been identified as working “closely” with the Verona school system. It has not been disclosed who these parents are, how this committee was formed, what the criteria was for joining or being selected, or what the selection process involved. We have no way of knowing what their agenda or biases are. Additionally, the form for submitting the questions was not anonymous, therefore this secret committee is not only getting to decide WHAT questions are asked, but WHO gets to ask them–influenced by the identify of the questioner in determining what questions they will permit to be asked. Who empowered this committee to operate without any public accountability, to silence voices and individuals at their discretion, and to steer favorable questions to the candidates of their choosing? Do we even need to ask why all the secrecy? If Democracy needs to be suspended to advance an agenda, that tells you everything you need to know about the motives and the agenda.