School board candidate forum is on Sept. 14

The League of Women Voters of Minnetonka-Eden Prairie-Hopkins (LWV MEPH) is hosting an Eden Prairie School Board candidate forum starting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 14.

It takes place in the council chambers of Eden Prairie City Center, 8080 Mitchell Road, and is open to the public. 

But, because there is limited seating, it will be streamed live. The live broadcast can be viewed on EPTV, the city’s cable government access channel, at edenprairie.org/CityTV, and on the city’s Facebook channel. The forum will be rebroadcast on EPTV several times weekly and available on-demand on the city’s website leading up to Election Day on Nov. 8. 

Learn more about the candidates by reading our recent story.

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Eden Prairie residents can submit written questions for the forum by going to lwvmeph.org. Use the “Contact” tab at the top of the website home page to submit questions.

The deadline to submit questions is 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13. Candidates will not be given the questions in advance of the forum. 

This week, LWV MEPH offered a reminder of the process its volunteers go through to bring “thoughtful, impartial questions to our forums.”

Submitted questions, LWV MEPH stressed, should strive to accomplish the following:

• Define a candidate’s position on issues relevant to the office being sought.
• Learn about the candidate’s process to formulate a position or make a decision.
• Determine a candidate’s knowledge, background, and skills relative to the office sought.
• Attempt to gain information and not simply make a statement.

LWV MEPH also stated that questions should not be:

• About personal matters not related to the elective position.
• Unclear or vague, hostile, antagonistic, and belligerent.
• Friendly, supportive or gratuitous to a certain candidate or party.

The LWV MEPH noted that all questions are copied and pasted on a spreadsheet that does not contain any information about the person who submitted the question. A computer program is used to organize according to the topic “keyword” and the number of questions on that topic. 

It stated that an impartial committee of LWV volunteers willing to research and familiarize themselves with the issue reviews the questions based on the following criteria:

• Questions are selected in good faith, representing the interests expressed by the questions submitted.
• Questions should focus on the future and not be based on hindsight. 
• Questions must be on subjects relevant to this forum or election race. 
• Questions that are of a personal nature, embarrassing, inappropriately hostile, or unclear in intent will not be asked. 
• All questions must be addressed to all candidates in the same manner.
• Questions may be consolidated and or edited to be as impartial as possible.

The LWV MEPH added that its team takes multiple questions on a single topic and either uses one or a number of the questions to consolidate them into a clear, concise, impartial question.