Pamela Powers Hannley covered the Drinking Liberally forum for the Democrat candidates for TUSD Governing Board last week. David Safir from Blog for Arizona was the moderator.
Powers described the evening as “cordial. There were no outbursts from the candidates or the audience of about 35, which included current TUSD board member Adelita Grijalva.”
Dave (and audience members) asked several great questions on a wide range of topics including Mexican American Studies, the TUSD budget, teachers’ unions, school closing, administrative downsizing, and many more. Each candidate got one minute to answer each question, plus a 1.5 minute opening and closing statement. If one candidate directly critized another one, the defendant got a 30-second rebuttal. As a result, Kristel Foster and Betts Putnam-Hidalgo gave Dr. Mark Stegeman and Miguel Cuevas a few extra minutes over the course of the evening.
Independent John Hunnicutt, and Republican candidates Debe Campos Fleenor and Alexandre Sugiyama did not attend the Democrat event.
Powers filmed the entire TUSD forum; below are the candidates’ closing arguments