When I announced a few weeks ago that I would not be able to record podcast interviews for all the Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) school board candidates, I received an offer from a brother-sister combination at Fishers High School. Izzy is a senior and her brother Casey is a freshman at FHS. Both are alumni of Mike Fassold’s “We The People” program at Fishers Junior High School. Both Izzy & Casey were members of national championship teams at FJHS.
“We The People” is a program centered on civics and knowledge of the U.S. Constitution. Teams compete by presenting a four-minute paper, reading it verbally to the judges, then taking questions from those judges.
Both contacted me with an interest in helping with the production of candidate podcasts. So, last week, Izzy sent me eleven audio files of candidate podcast interviews. It took me several days to complete the post-production work on all eleven audio files and turn them into podcasts for posting on this blog.
All eleven candidates agreed to be interviewed by this high school duo. Izzy and Casey definitely brought a different perspective to those discussions than an adult such as myself would do.
So, just how interested are people in these podcasts? I checked the numbers as of noon Monday, less than 24 hours after all podcasts were posted. The stats are unbelievable.
The number I will cite is a measure of “listens.” A listen means one person listened to most or all of a podcast. So far, all podcasts combined have a total number of listens exceeding 650. That breaks all records for listens this soon in the process.
It is clear residents in the HSE School District want to hear what the candidates have to say, and like the approach Izzy & Casey took to these discussions.
I posted each podcast one at a time Sunday, October 4. If you want a handy listing, here are links to all the candidate podcasts, by township. Remember, this is an at-large election, so all registered voters in the district may select one candidate per township when voting this cycle.
Here are the links:
FALL CREEK TOWNSHIP
Delaware Township
Wayne Township