A freelance journalist and podcast producer who recently interviewed school board trustee candidates ahead of Monday’s election has a message for voters who may not have given those positions all that much thought.
“It’s an important decision and we have to take it seriously,” said Ayesha Barmania, who co-hosts the Peterborough Currents podcast with Will Pearson.
A recent instalment of the podcast, which normally focuses on documentaries rather than current affairs, focused on those vying for English public school board seats in Peterborough and Peterborough County.
Interviewing candidates and speaking with voters helped Barmania, a former CBC radio reporter and writer for Trent University student newspaper the Arthur, gain knowledge about a system they found unfamiliar.
For example, learning that the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board has a budget about $50 million larger than the City of Peterborough.
“That’s a huge amount of money they are responsible for the governance of,” said Barmania, who graduated Trent’s international development studies program in 2015.
With that obligation and our youth in mind, they said it would be “irresponsible” for voters not to take the election of school board candidates seriously.
To that end, the goal of the trustee podcast was to foster education — to provide an election resource for voters. “This decision is too important not to be informed about.”
Overall, Barmania called the candidates are well-informed. Many of them share the same opinions on issues, specifically when it comes to mandates being issued by the province — such as planning to revert to older sexual education curriculum.
Leave a Reply