Candidate’s Forum and Kid’s Voting

I had the pleasure of attending the Candidate’s Forum for the folks running for the Lee County School Board this evening. Communities In Schools has been working with Lee County Schools and the Sanford Herald for the second time (the last time was 2 years ago) to hold our Kid’s Voting Program. So, we had three students from East Lee Middle School and three students from West Lee Middle School there to ask the questions of the candidates. They did an AWESOME job!!!! I was so proud of all of them!!!

More on the candidates in a minute — first, I want to talk about Kid’s Voting! This is a wonderful program – I wish it was available when my son was in school!!! It is a comprehensive program that touches grades K-12 and includes the schools providing year long curricula for social studies, math, and other subjects. They write essays, learn about the democratic process, and learn what an important privilege the right to vote is. When we did this two years ago, I had the honor of being a judge in the essay contest and I can tell you that it was an extremely difficult decision! The essays were on the importance of voting — some of them brought tears to my eyes and made me proud to be an American!!!! The program also includes allowing kids in all grades to go to the official precincts and vote for the same candidates their parents vote for on election day. The kids have their own voting booths – separate from the adults – to avoid any confusion or voting errors. Their votes are tabulated and will be reported in the Herald a few days after the official adult election results. The program promotes voter participation — not only by getting kids in the habit of voting early, but also gets the parents into the precinct when they take their kids!

Take your kids to your precinct with you on May 6th and again during the general election in November! Every precinct has a Kid’s Voting booth.

We’re looking for more volunteers to help man booths on May 6th — if you would like to volunteer, call the CIS office at 718-5426!!!

Now – as for the forum………I’ve said on here before that I don’t publicly talk about my political opinions or who I support. This post will be no different. I will, however, say that I was very impressed with all the candidates – some more than others, of course, but all have the potential to be positive additions to the School Board. Of course, all politicians will say what the voters want to hear and you need to read between the lines and determine how committed they are to what they are promising to do. Tonight, I thought they all appeared to be passionate about what counts in this job — the successful education of the children of Lee County. It’s gonna be a tough race!!!!

The forum, itself, was very nice — the Herald does a good job of putting on these forums! And the reception before the forum was a great way to mingle with the candidates and others. Not to mention, it was catered by Chef Paul — their crab dip is to die for!!!!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.