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1st Amendment Elections SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls School District Election

l3wis 0Comments

The Sioux Falls School District will hold their election next Tuesday, May 13. There are 4 candidates running for 2 seats, with 1 incumbent running.

While you can vote for 2 candidates, I am only endorsing ONE candidate; Patricia Ringold.

I was in a weird position this time around to NOT know any of the candidates personally so I was able to do my research like everyone else, reading bios, media questions and the candidate forum. I have kept an open mind, and she rises to the top every time. Besides being just an average Jane (not a ladder climber looking to add something to her resume) she has years of experience in youth education and when she talks about the school system and kids you can tell she truly cares and understands.

As for the other candidates, they are all OK, so that is up to you, but what steered me away from them were some of their long winded, meaningless, canned answers. Kelly is the incumbent, yet she hasn’t said a peep about what she has accomplished so far on the board and blabbed about training HS school students for the trades, which is great, but she kept talking about the students as if they were part of some kind of economic development big picture instead of encouraging them to pursue higher education. Werner is a Trumper, but he does have some great ideas, unfortunately he thinks it is OK to display the 10 Commandments in the school room even though it is a clear constitutional violation. Duffy is a canned candidate that the Dems pulled from their hat. An accomplished attorney who made sure she answered every question perfectly. She was handpicked by out going board member Reiter who now serves as her treasurer of her campaign. This kind of crap irritates the piss out of me. Carly, you are done, enjoy your school board retirement. Why do outgoing candidates in this town always have to recruit a replacement for them? It’s irritating and to be quite honest with you it is extremely UNETHICAL and lacks integrity. I think Carly accomplished a lot of great things on the school board, so BRAVO! But let the chips fall where they may. This is why I am telling people to NOT vote for Duffy. This setup disqualifies her and you would think an attorney would know better. Oh, and none of the candidates mentioned our exploding property taxes. You want to know why? Because they avoid controversial topics like a 10 foot pole. I like leaders with spines.

Elections SF City Council SF School Board Member

The Bizarre stuff folks do when running for local public office

l3wis 6Comments

You can always tell when someone local is running their own campaign(s) or getting extremely poor advice when they do silly things with their paperwork. So this Thomas Werner dude is running for school board, he has ran in the past for the legislature and failed. I can see why, he seems to be giving himself some very poor campaign advice. It’s too late to correct the F’up now, but it was a really stupid move. So the election for school board is May 13, which gives him just a few weeks to campaign. So what does he decide to do while running for school board? File his paperwork to run for city council. WTF? Do you want to be on the school board? Do you know how this looks? It’s like you already gave up on that seat. No wonder no one votes for you. There is NO voter confidence. So is this illegal to run for two different seats at the same time? In this case NO. But if the city council and school board were the same election and on the same ballot he could NOT run for a council seat and school board seat at the same time. I just shake my head sometimes when I see folks run their own campaigns. Maybe he will file paperwork to run for Central District city council, At-Large city council and Mayor. And if he wins all three seats he will save us a lot of money. No surprise his FB page is littered with Trump Junk.

1st Amendment Elections SF School Board Member SF School District

School Board Candidate Forum on Wednesday

l3wis 0Comments

You can watch the event HERE! There are four candidates, but it is pretty obvious who will emerge on top. I am attending the Change Makers event on Saturday where 50 concerned citizens get to question the candidates in an open forum/round table. Can’t wait. I will focus on the 1st Amendment in my questioning. Be prepared candidates, I don’t accept BS answers, and I will call you out. I think anyone who runs for political office, especially locally, needs to study the constitution forward and backward. If you don’t understand the highest level of government law, you don’t understand governing.

Education funding SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls State Funding State Legislature

Sioux Falls School Board rips the State Legislature to shreds

l3wis 5Comments

This was fantastic. It was about time a local governing body told the public what they really think of our legislature. I have been following our legislature for 20 years, and they have always been morons, but over the past 5 years you almost wonder if the only people we elect are crazy and (extra) stupid? This happens because we don’t have open primaries, oh, and our Dem party is almost non-existent. (FF: 1:00:00)

Elections Mayor TenHaken SF City Council SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls

See what happens with public engagement in Sioux Falls

l3wis 5Comments

Not sure which SFSD Board Members pulled their arses from their heads, but this was a wonderful way to engage the public about elections, etc.;

Nearly two dozen people attended an informational meeting about what it takes to be a school board member, and how to run for school board, for the Sioux Falls School District on Tuesday night.

Sioux Falls School District Board of Education President Carly Reiter and vice president Dawn Marie Johnson led the meeting, and explained that board members approve budgets and policies, hire and oversee the superintendent, develop and review policies, represent community interests in education and attend appropriate city, state and national events.

Imagine that, when you have a meeting at 6 PM on Tuesday night you can actually get people to attend (though this is at the same time of the council meeting.) You are also helping people to navigate the political landscape. While I appreciate the public engagement, we know that they will be handpicked, funded candidates that Poops and Matt Paulson pull from one of their prosperity gospel churches. The right wingers will likely put someone up to, though they didn’t have much luck the last two elections. I wonder if they also talked about how to file a campaign finance form that is not perjured?

I think it would be great if 24 people ran for school board. That’s what public engagement is about, not hiding in your basement doing jumping jacks.

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