Advertisement

School district debate Wednesday will be first for Mesa Verde

Share
<i>This post has been corrected, as noted below</i>

Mesa Verde Community Inc. is hosting its first-ever Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee candidate forum Wednesday night.

Mesa Verde Community, a nonprofit established in 1965, has hosted forums featuring Costa Mesa City Council candidates in the past six elections, but has never hosted one for the school board race.

The organization came up with the idea of hosting the forum featuring just school board candidates after noticing how many people appear to overlook the race, said President and forum moderator Darnell Wyrick.

Advertisement

“It’s a place for people to come to understand what the candidate’s goals are and their primary objectives and to see what they’re bringing to the table,” he said. “We thought it would be helpful for people who are interested, or maybe don’t know a lot about what’s going on with the school district.”

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Mesa Verde Methodist Church, 1701 Baker St. Wyrick will pose questions to each of the candidates for the first portion of the event. Later in the forum, members from the audience will be able to ask questions of their own.

Each of the candidates will have an opportunity to share their ideas about improving the test scores and overall academics in some of the district’s lower performing schools, as well as the possibility of instituting term limits for board members, Wyrick said.

The Costa Mesa Brief, a YouTube.com channel, will film the event.

Three seats on Newport-Mesa Unified’s seven-member school board are up for grabs in November’s election.

Former trustee and current Newport-Mesa parent Michael Collier will battle former district principal Charlene Metoyer to represent the Costa Mesa High School zone. Trustee Katrina Foley, who currently represents the zone, is running for City Council.

Current trustee Walt Davenport will run for reelection against parents Lisa Manfredi and Fidel Mora to represent Area 7, which is made up of several elementary schools on Costa Mesa’s Westside.

Vicki Snell, who was appointed to the board this year, and Steve Smith, the vice chairman of the Fairview Park Citizen’s Advisory Committee and frequent school board critic, will face off to represent the Estancia High School zone.

The only candidate that has not yet committed to the event is Mora. He could not be reached for comment by press time.

[For the record, 12:10 p.m., Oct. 6: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said CMTV would film the school board candidate forum. The Costa Mesa Brief will film the event.]

Advertisement