Thursday, April 26, 2007

Candidate Night - School Board

The second Candidate Open House was held on Thursday night at the Nazareth News Agency on Main Street in Nazareth featuring primarily the District Magistrate candidates, but also one School Board candidate Chad Cornell.

Cornell is a Bushkill resident in a three person race for two openings on the Nazareth Area School District Board of Directors. I sat down with Chad and enjoyed a conversation about himself and the school district.

Chad grew up in Stroudsburg and after living for a period of time out of the area, moved to Bushkill three years ago. Since he's been back Chad has been involved in the Bushkill PTA, which led to his decision to run for School Board. While he would like to focus on education and noted his interest in curriculum development from grade to grade, he stated that undoubtedly the biggest challenge we face is the budget, especially with the new projects and tax limitations.

I did challenge him a bit on a personal topic of interest to me, all day K, and Chad had a thoughtful approach to the issue. He was interested more in knowing what educational advantages our program would have compared to a half day and what it would mean to students (my summary). He provided examples using his own family's experience and made his points well.

Many thanks to Chad for his time and he should earn some extra consideration from readers for being the only School Board candidate to attend.

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