Northville School Board Candidate Forum Set For Monday Night

Five people are vying for three seats in the Northville school board election in November.

On Monday night, citizens will have an opportunity to hear from the candidates at an education forum sponsored by the Northville parent-driven Legislative Action Network (LAN.) The forum will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Middle School.

The candidates – Michael Barrett, Roland Hwang, Cynthia Jankowski, Adam Phelps and Matthew Wilk – will have a few minutes to introduce themselves.

Next, LAN will kick off the questions by having its moderator ask a few. Meanwhile, the audience can submit questions on notecards at the event, said LAN district chair Christa DiNapoli. LAN will sift through the submissions and present them to the moderator to be asked. She anticipates, depending on the volume of the questions, that the candidates will have about two minutes to reply. There will be a time-keeper giving the candidates time checks.

In total, the forum should take about 90 minutes, DiNapoli said. The school district has posted bios of the candidates on its website.

"My goal really is to give the community an opportunity to learn about these candidates," DiNapoli said. "There’s three open seats. That’s almost half of the board."

Over the past couple of years, the board has been charged with very difficult decisions, including the privatization of some services and increasing class sizes.