In case you haven't heard

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120824/NEWS04/208240355/10-candidates-vying-4-seats-IPS-Board



The deadline for filing for IPS school board was Friday August 24th at noon. I am a little surprised at the conclusion of it all.

District 1- I knew Caitlin, Larry, and James were running, and I didn't expect any new candidates.

District 2- Knew about Gayle, Sharon, and Elizabeth, but Alvin was a surprise.

District 4 - So happy and relieved for Diane that she is the only candidate in this district. She is an amazing board member. So looking forward to another two years (at least) with her!

At large- This is the biggest shock. There two candidates. Dare I say only two? Nothing against Larry or Sam. I am just shocked that only two people district wide thought about running. When I ran, there were 7 of us.

When I ran for school board, even though there were 7 of us, we ran a good clean race. We never ran a campaign by bringing someone else down. We fought for the spot that we wanted by making our case, our argument. We became friendly with one another, a few I would consider friends. Offered advice. I hope that this campaign can be just as clean.

We knew that Mary Busch was not going to run again. And we found out Friday morning about this....

http://blogs.indystar.com/education/2012/08/24/2nd-eugene-white-ally-decides-not-to-run-for-school-board/

Marianna decided not to run again as well. I didn't expect her to, but I wasn't for certain, apparently she wasn't either.

I was a little taken aback by her words, "I need a break from the blitz of negativity from entities outside of IPS, and a concurrent break from the negativity from inside the board." We certainly see things very differently.

I am glad time is moving forward. I am glad we know who the candidates are now, and the time to learn about them is upon us. I encourage everyone to do their research, find the best candidate, and get out to vote. I encourage the candidates to keep it clean, if if someone else doesn't.

I still haven't (totally) decided who I am supporting or how to go about it. If I support candidate X and candidate Y wins then I have potentially damaged a relationship before it even begins. I would hope that those feelings could be set aside. But is it worth the risk? I haven't decided that yet.