 Good evening and welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and Town Meeting on the first Tuesday in March, March 1st, 2022. Town Meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in Town Meeting TV election forums. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to communities, community decision makers and connect to you with the issues that shape your local community. My name is Emily Brewer and I will be moderating tonight's Winooski School Board candidate forum. With us we have incumbent Kamal Dahal who is running against David Xavier Wallace for a three-year seat on the board. And David is joining us now. That is great. Hello, David. Great to have you on. I'm just introducing the forum right now. And so if you are watching this live we would love to hear your questions at 802-862-3966. And you can watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087, Rillington Telecoms Channels 17 and 217 as well as online at Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. With that said, we will get started with opening statements and we will start with Kamal. Can you please tell us why you were running and what will be different for Winooski if you are re-elected? Thank you very much. Again, my name is Kamal Dahal. I'm running for three years School Board position. So I just wanna be honest with the public. I'm 29 years old and I don't have an extensive resume working on any other boards or holding any other public office beside the last one year term of School Board. But I do have experience of starting a completely new life from scratch at age 17. I do have experience of transitioning from refugee camp to school in Nepal to American high school. And all these experiences have taught me very valuable and important lessons which I feel is important to exist in the board which is deeply committed to its end statement of graduating all students regardless of their background. So being on the board for the next three years allows me to continue my commitment to bring diverse community voices and perspective into the decision making table while providing continued opportunity for me to serve the larger Winooski community which is my chosen home for life. So again, I believe the perspective I bring on the board is not only valued in establishing more equitable policies but my outsider perspective open store for an alternative solutions which can actually help save taxpayers money as well. Thank you very much Kamal. We will now move over to David. Davis, David, can you please tell us why you are running and what will be different for Winooski if you are elected? Well, I'm hoping to get elected and help the students pursue decent education with a focus on academics. I wanna reach out to the community for the higher ups students who are getting ready to graduate. There's a lot of jobs available right now and I want the students to be able when they graduate to get out. I can tell you right now just like Carrick and Global Foundry are hiring and where I work at the post office is hiring. These are all good paying jobs and they will hire these kids if given an opportunity. And I wanna create opportunities as well with an apprentice program in getting these young kids working with the local businesses here and to get the kids into the apprentices programs as well if they're interested and those who show aptitude to have them go to college. There's a lot of kids that don't wanna go to college and I don't know if it's necessary to really push them into that direction. That's really not what they wanna do. And yeah, I wanna make sure the kids are getting a decent education and not deviating from that. Great, thank you very much, David. Thank you to both of the candidates for their opening statements and we will now move on to the question portion of tonight's forum and each candidate has about two minutes to respond and David, we will start with you and the question is, do you support this year's school budget? Well, are you asking me, is it enough money? Yes, I support us having a budget. The amount of money on the budget. Yeah, I mean, I understand that we passed a bond and increased our, I was opposed to that. So that element, I suppose, would be opposed to that part of it but not opposed to spending the money on the students per se. Okay, thank you. Kamal. Yeah, absolutely. The proposed fiscal year 2020 to 23 budget reflects our commitment, board commitment to putting children first and the board has prioritized year round transportation to and from school and expanded pre-K programming. So this will increase our projected equalized pupil spending by 24.5% compared to the current year or previous year. However, we've as a board, we felt that it was a necessary and very critical investment that is needed to serve our students and community at the best. Also the proposed budget also includes tough decisions. I was on those meetings. So as has been the case over the previous year, we continue to tackle significant economic pressures due to the inequitable funding based on an outdated pupil waiting formula. There's capital project debt and operational and financial challenges. That's caused by uncertainty of COVID-19. So I support this budget because the board has worked really hard to make an investment in our most critical priorities such as transportation and pre-K programming, expending that while reducing financial burden for taxpayers as much as possible. Great, thank you very much, Kamal. And we will stick with you. And the next question is that Winooski has been having conversations around racial justice and education. What have you learned from these conversations? I've learned a lot of things. First, racial injustice today is a result of America's dark past of blatant racial discrimination and history of slavery. The ripple effect of those practices in the past exist in our culture today, our justice system and even educational institutions. It's a widespread issue across the nation in various degrees. And some of those issues are very much visible. As a nation, I think we have yet to heal from our painful past. Locally speaking, the board had made considerable progress in terms of addressing some of the issues highlighted by our students. However, I learned that there's still a lot more work to be done to ensure racial equity. And like I said earlier, it's a healing process. So it takes great amount of care, patience and time. Great, thank you very much, Kamal. And David, what have you learned from these conversations? Well, I wasn't party to those conversations, but I do believe that we're in a situation in this country where there's an overemphasis on racism and people aren't looking at the accomplishments of the minorities in this country and how far they've come along. And it seems as if we're never gonna move ahead if we're constantly blaming white people for the shortcomings of other groups in this country, people have to look into themselves, look inwards and pick themselves up and move ahead. You will never meet someone who's financially successful who got there by complaining about racism, by feeling that they didn't get that shot because they were discriminated against it. And we gotta teach these young people that you've gotta look into yourself and push yourself. And not just sit there and think every time you fail it's because of racism. We have affirmative action in this country. We have laws in this country that deal with the issues of discrimination and it's against the law for an employer to discriminate. It's against the law for someone to violently attack you because of the color of your skin. They have additional charges placed on them. I think that we may have gone too far with this over emphasis on racism in this country instead of just focusing on turning inward, hit the books, get good at learning, learn a skill. You're gonna get a lot further in this world that way than you are by just looking for shortcomings and blaming them on other people. This country is going to be minority white probably in the next 20 years. And people are still gonna be capitalizing on racism as the reason why things aren't going the way they want them to. And it's time we move on from that. Thank you, David. And sticking with this sort of thread and we'll stay with you for this question. Do you support the passage of H.584 which would require standards in education designed to promote anti-racism in schools? Are you asking me this? No, I don't even understand the concept of anti-racism. And I wanna put an end to the teaching of critical race theory. And one of the reasons I'm running for office here is to make sure that this isn't what's being taught in the schools, what's being taught is academics. Gotta teach the basics on how to make it in this world. You wanna focus on racism, you're gonna be coming up short every time. Thank you, David. And we will move over to Kamal for this question. Do you support the passage of H.584 which would require standards in education to design to promote anti-racism in school? Let me first actually read what the bill states. It states that the purpose of this is to create an anti-racism certification program for schools that recognize fully the history, contribution and perspective of ethnic groups and social groups. And it also lists six different certification requirements. I support the bill as it exists now because this bill is not necessarily just about promoting anti-racism in school today. We all acknowledge the history of slavery and different forms of discrimination following slavery against minorities. So the lingering effect of this practice is still exist in our culture today and have created an inequitable society. So I think that this bill is an effort to move the needle towards a more equitable society for future generations. And I certainly want to see my kids growing up understanding the history from multiple viewpoints and correcting our historical flaws. Thank you very much. I would just like to, before we move on to our next question, I would like to remind folks that we are taking calls from the community and we would love to hear from you. Please call us at 802-862-3966 and moving on, Kamal will answer this question first. The question is, what impacts has the pandemic had on learning for students in the Winooski school system? And what would you do in your role on the school board to address or work with these impacts? COVID-19 had an impact on everyone and our students are certainly no exceptions. The stress of not being able to socialize and elongated period of isolation with remote learning can lead to increased risk of mental illness, addiction, or impet learning abilities. So all the operational decisions such as school reopening, closing, masking, et cetera, in Winooski falls under the school super attendance purview, the board is also making efforts to create a direct channel to students via student representative in the board. So I hope that having a student representative helps us influence policies to ensure that the students various issues, including the issues regarding the impacts of pandemic learning are reflected in our policy decisions. Thank you very much, Kamal. And David, what impacts has the pandemic had on learning for students in the Winooski school system and what would you do in your role on the school board to address or work with these impacts? Well, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a very negative impact on the learning in our school. As soon as I'm elected, I'm gonna remove all mask mandates. They never should have, the schools never should have been closed in the first place last year with this remote learning. The kids fell behind, should have been in class. And now this COVID, everybody's vaccinated. Everybody should be in school, no masks. And this is affecting their socialization. The kids need to be able to live their lives. Kids are not the ones that are dying from COVID. It is people that are older and that have multiple problems that have been dying, is not affecting children on any scales. Less than 1% of the kids have died from this. We can't live like this. And I do have a major problem with the superintendent. It's my understanding that he's decided to take a four month sabbatical based on the stress of having to work during COVID. Well, guess what? All of us had to work during COVID. I don't know how someone who's making $150,000 a year is gonna take a four month sabbatical. I've never taken a four month vacation in my life. This guy's making a fortune and money and he's gonna go and do this. I don't know who approved this. This is unacceptable and he needs to be terminated. Thank you, David. All right, moving on to our next question and we'll stick with you, David, for this. What educational reforms are most important to you and your constituents over the next five to 10 years? We need to start modernizing our educational system and really helping the kids with the vocations and making sure the best kids are the ones that are going to college and that they have a plan to go there. Having kids going into debt, having school advisors telling them, yeah, just get into college and borrow money, that's not a plan because there are so many kids right now in their 20s and 30s, they can't buy a house. They can't do anything because they've got $100,000 college debts. They are literally worse off than had they never gone to college. So we've got to get these advisors, got to get them back on board on being a little bit more realistic because the education isn't free. There's nothing I can do about that, that higher education keeps getting more and more expensive. That's a different issue and that's for different politicians to deal with. As I've mentioned before, I want to get a good program in place to help the other kids get into vocations and get them recruited by local employers for all the different jobs that are available out there. Thank you, David. And Kamal, what educational reforms are most important to you and your constituents over the next five to 10 years? I think just setting up policies that support the end statement that we have for Winiski School Board. So there's one other thing that I wanted to add on this, just my personal thought is the way we educate our kids has sifted along with the advancement of technology, right? So we used to chalkboard, for example, and now we've moved on to a modern digital mediums. For example, remote learning option was an alternative to closing a school. So 30 years ago, we would have been unimaginable to even think about that, that you would be able to achieve education. However imperfect it may have, at least you'll be able to achieve education from a comfort of your home in case of pandemic. So I believe the distant learning model will be most important aspects of educational reform, somewhat of a hybrid model. If there is another pandemic, we have learned from this pandemic. Thank you Kamal. And I would just like to remind community members watching once again before we wrap up our forum that we would love to hear any questions that you might have at 802-862-3966. And Kamal, the next question we have here is, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the school and how would you use your seat on the school board to address these issues? And as a follow up, what is your vision for Winooski's education future? Yeah, my past one year of experience, one of the biggest challenges that I've noticed is the inequitable state funding in the midst of capital projects and pandemic uncertainty. Board will continue, and I will if elected as a part of a board will continue to work hard alongside with the administrators. On every cost-saving measures and continue to fight for equitable funding. My vision for Winooski's school is that our students graduate with proficiencies that meets the standards of today's society. Also to ensure that our students can graduate and they are either career ready or ready to move on to college. Thank you Kamal. David, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the school and how would you use your seat on the school board to address these issues? And as a follow up, what is your vision for Winooski's education future? Well, I think the biggest challenge is the number of foreign born students. And so we have to have English immersion classes there for them and we get their family involved as well. If we can get their family to come in, open the school up at night when the kids go home, have teachers teaching the parents as well, English. And English immersion also would require them, the parents and the kids, to speak to each other in English at home so that get everybody up to speed. The faster you can learn this language, the easier it is to simulate and get a good paying job once you graduate from school. And it's easier for their parents to get work as well. So to get everybody on board with the training and of course with the academics, the focusing on making sure that kids are getting ready to go to college or to have a plan for when they graduate from school. So that by the time they're seniors, they've got a pretty good idea what they wanna do with their lives. Thank you very much, David. And we are coming to the end of our forum here. So I want to give enough time for both of our candidates to have closing statements. So we will start with David for those. Well, I've mentioned before, I wanna reach out to the businessmen out there in our community and outside of it, have them recruit some of the students. It's my understanding that there's a company called Beta that's manufacturing airplanes. They wanna hire about 800 people in the next few months or maybe within a year or two. I would certainly want them to be able to come into Winooski and recruit. It's gonna be a factory, they're gonna be hiring all kinds of technicians as well. Those are jobs that require an apprenticeship to learn how to do that kind of work. It's an opportunity to really, to make some decent money for a lot of people. And there's other factories here that are hiring a lot of people. I think we have an opportunity to really get these kids into good careers or good paying jobs. Great, thank you, David. And Kamal, your closing statement. I don't wanna say much. I will not say that to the public who you should or should not vote for. But I really urge every eligible resident of Winooski to vote and participate in the democratic process. Voting is our right and responsibility. Again, I was born in a refugee camp and I didn't get my citizenship until I was 24. So I really urge everyone, please, please, please utilize your civic duty and vote on March 1, of course, or vote by mail. Thank you, Kamal. And thank you very much to both Kamal and David for participating in tonight's Winooski School Board Candidate Forum. And thank you to our viewers for tuning in to town meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local community candidates, budget and ballot items. You can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. And don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in town meeting day, March 1st, 2022. Early voting by mail is available. Contact your town clerk's office to find out how your community is handling vote by mail. Polls will also be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thank you very much for watching.