Two wonderful candidates with a passion for education are running for Arlington school board, position 3.
Challenger Judy Fay, who taught in the district for 30 years, says she should be elected because the board needs someone with a teaching background on it.
We agree. That is a perspective that every school board should have.
However, the school board would lose too much if eight-year incumbent Ursula Ghirardo is defeated. She is one of the most-effective members of this board.
The Stanford graduate and 20-year resident got on the board when the district was struggling financially and has helped it recover. She also helped the district make strides in improving its arts and advanced placement courses. She adds she was a teacher, although not as long as Fay, of math in Arlington so she does understand that perspective, along with all of the others a director needs to have.
Fay has a lot of education knowledge. She has a lot of valid complaints about education today, but frankly many of them have to do more with state mandates than what Ghirardo has done on the board.
We hope Fay decides to run again in two years, when some other positions on the board are up for election. But for now, Ghirardo again is the best choice.
Jeff Vaughan is up for re-election to the Marysville City Council, and we see no reason to replace him.
At least in the past three years that we have been covering the council, Vaughan is easily the most-effective council member. He often is the only one who will offer a dissenting viewpoint, even if it’s just to play devil’s advocate to get a discussion going.
We need more council members who will go against the group think, just to make sure options are discussed so the best one can be chosen.
His challenger, Robert Weiss, did fill out our questionnaire sent to all the candidates, but he didn’t show up for the editorial board, which makes us wonder about his reliability.
An engineer, he was a Boeing SPEEA representative and says he learned to listen to different viewpoints to get the best result.
That is just not enough to take down a strong city councilman. Vote Vaughan to get the best result for the city.
