Ottawa - 2010 Elections - Candidate Questions/Responses

ABC Ottawa sent out an email with questions to all the Trustee Candidates, of both the Public and Catholic Boards, who had email addresses posted on the City of Ottawa election site. You will see a copy of our email at the bottom of the page. Click on the names of the Candidates to view their replies. Thank you to all the candidates who took the time to reply!

Ottawa Carleton District School Board

Zone 1	Zone 2	Zone 3	Zone 4
Todd Johnson Lynn Scott	Christine Boothby Cathy Curry	Donna Blackburn Allan Halfper Ismail Mohamed	Theresa Kavanagh Doug Lloyd Michael Pastien
Zone 5	Zone 6	Zone 7	Zone 8
Kimberly Brown Pam Fitzgerald	Mohamoud Abdulle Bronwyn Funiciello John Marshall	Dave Byron Mark Fisher Pam Morse	Lale Eskicioglu John Shea
Zone 9	Zone 10	Zone 11	Zone 12
Rob Campbell Helen Gruber Julin Kirby Lorne Rachlis Daniel Rogers	Megan Carroll Jennifer McKenzie	Shirley Seward	Chris Ellis Katie Holtzhauer

Ottawa Catholic School Board

Zone 1	Zone 2	Zone 3	Zone 4
John Curry	Hudson Egbert Ted Hurley	Brian Coburn Michael Karpishka Anita MacDonald Marc-André Plante Xavier Rankin	Alison Baizana Cathy Maguire-Urban
Zone 5	Zone 6	Zone 7	Zone 8
Katalin Sheskay	Gord Butler	Betty-Ann Kealy	Mark Mullan
Zone 9	Zone 10
Kathy Ablett John Chiarelli	Megan Crowe Tom Duggan Thérèse Maloney Cousineau

Dear Incumbent Trustees and Trustee Candidates,

With a fall municipal election upon us, the Ottawa Chapter of the Association for Bright Children of Ontario would like to assist its membership in making an informed decision on October 25th when they vote for their School Board Trustee.

As a chapter of a registered charity, ABC Ottawa is not in a position to endorse any of the candidates running for election. However, we would like to assist all candidates in passing on their message to our membership. ABC Ottawa has nearly 1000 members from every area of the Ottawa region - parents who are deeply concerned about the quality of public education and its impact on their children and their communities.

We would welcome the comments of all trustee candidates on the following questions related to the education of bright and gifted children.

How would you, as a candidate for school board trustee, define a gifted child, and what do you feel are the primary needs of gifted students?

Do you believe gifted children should be formally identified as special needs students?

If so, do you believe the criteria and procedures in place in your school board for identifying gifted students is sufficient?

Does your school board have board-wide screening in place to identify gifted students? If not, would you support implementation of board-wide screening?

Do you support specialized classes for gifted students?

Do you support acceleration for those students who can demonstrate that they are already working beyond their grade level curriculum?

Of course, if there are additional issues you wish to address with ABC Ottawa members, feel free to add them. ABC Ottawa will share your responses and views with its membership in mid-October by making them available on our website. If possible, please have your response to us by 13 October 2010.

We look forward to hearing from you, and wish you the best of luck in your campaign.

Sincerely,

Marc Comeau

ABC Ottawa Chapter President