Dancing around the tough questions

For someone who has never held office before, Madison School Board Candidate Maya Cole has the political art of not really answering a question down already. Below is her ‘answer’ to whether or not she would support building new schools at a time when the Madison school population is not growing. If you can find her answer below, please let me know. The other candidates actually answered this very important question from the Isthmus. You can find those here.

Cole: Madison schools are in the precarious position of experiencing somewhat stable or declining enrollment trends while being surounded by population growth outside the city limits. In making this decision as a board, we need to evaluate the process of how we got to a position of having to build a new school.

My first allegiance, as an elected official, is to go to the voters and explain why all the children come first.

There are many factors to consider. Dane County's birth rate is rising steadily. We need to understand trends beyond birth rates and use as many resources of data as we can. Our plan should include consideration of the demographic trends of the entire geographic area. I am concerned that parents of children attending Leopold have had to deal with unacceptable conditions at their school. We need a long term plan to ensure that what has happened to Leopold doesn't happen to other schools.

We need to take a hard look at what draws families to nearby districts. We should support the upkeep of our current schools. I would like to see an update on the age of each school, last date of improvement, and what improvements are upcoming for the physical building. We need to ask questions beyond the cost of building a school. What will be the cost of staff and support services? Will we build to cut down energy costs?

It is important to balance this choice with the other factors that keep parents in the existing schools. We cannot lose sight of all the other factors that make the district as a whole an attractive place to raise and educate kids. My priorities include a focus on equity, safety, proper upkeep of buildings, high quality teachers, healthy schools and a challenging curriculum.