When you are writing a local news blog all by yourself, you will miss a few things.  I missed the October 10th Hamilton Southeastern School Board candidate debate held at the Fishers City Hall.  The event was jointly sponsored by public radio station WFYI & Current Publishing.

First, kudos to those local institutions for putting this together.  I believe this was the only joint appearance by all the school board candidates.  You can watch the video at this link.

The entire debate is about an hour and a half long.  I will not comment on what the candidates had to say, you can watch the candidates yourself and reach your own conclusions.

Allow me to say a few words about the two journalists serving as moderators.  I have come to know Leila Kheiry, editor of Current in Fishers, and Rachel Fradette, education reporter for WFYI.  They are both outstanding journalists.  They know what they are doing.

It doesn’t matter how you end up doing the moderator job, you will be criticized.  There is no way you have time to ask every question that could be asked.  There will be a segment of the audience that will be unhappy you left out their issue(s).

I have been called on to moderate candidate debates a few times in my career.  The most recent was in 2014 when Fishers had its first city election.  There were 6 candidates in the Republican primary.  No one filed in the Democratic primary and it was unlikely any Democrat would choose to run.  Therefore, this Republican primary would likely elect Fishers’ first mayor.

I was asked to moderate a candidate debate sponsored by the Fishers Arts Council. I accepted.

I started researching the challenges of moderating a candidate debate at any level of government.  The best advice came from Jim Lehrer, former anchor the the PBS nightly newscast and the person that moderated the most number of presidential candidate debates in American history.

Mr. Lehrer does not paint a pretty picture of moderating a political debate.  You can do all the research you can, even with the help of staff.  You will always be attacked for not asking the question or raising the issue important to some group of voters.

I took on that challenge in 2014 and didn’t get as much criticism as expected, but Lehrer was right, this is one tough assignment, even if done as perfectly as possible.

Which brings me to the October 10th event.  After watching the video, it is my view that Leila Kheiry and Rachelle Fradette did an outstanding job of raising the most important issues before these candidates within the time frame provided in this debate.

Yes, I have read the social media criticism of what issues were not raised in this debate.  I understand.  But these two experienced journalists did the best job possible asking questions of these candidates.

It is clear there are many differences of opinion among those running for HSE School Board this time around.  Remember, all voters in the HSE District can vote in all three township races because this is an at-large round of balloting.

The school board is a very key part of local government.  I would urge all eligible voters to take time, understand the candidates’ views, and vote in this election, either on election day, early voting or absentee if you qualify under law.

I conducted podcast interviews with all 6 HSE School Board candidates, each about 30 minutes in length.  You can find links to all those podcasts at this link.