District Teacher Forum to host Sumter school board candidate forum on Oct. 8
The Item to also interview candidates and publish race stories by area
Election season has begun, and for the always high-stakes Sumter school board races, there are opportunities to get to know the candidates for the open non-partisan seats on the nine-member board.
In addition to the Vote Guide with candidate questionnaires in this edition of The Sumter Item, the Sumter School District Teacher Forum will host a school board candidate forum soon, and The Item will also publish race stories weekly totaling coverage for all five areas that have open seats in November.
Each election cycle, the district's teacher forum, consisting of all schools' teachers of the year and immediate past teachers of the year, hosts at least one candidate forum, and this year's event will be Thursday, Oct. 8, at Crestwood High School Fine Arts Center, 2000 Oswego Highway in Sumter.
The forum will provide an opportunity for all 15 board candidates in the five area races to respond to questions submitted by district teachers on issues important to the future of education in Sumter School District, according to a district spokeswoman. Candidates will be asked three questions by a moderator and will have one minute to respond to each.
The candidate forum will be from 5 to 6 p.m., and the event is open to the public. From 6 to 7 p.m., attendees will have an opportunity to meet the candidates during a meet-and-greet session.
Also during October, The Item will interview candidates on important issues facing the district and board and publish stories for each of the five areas that are up for election on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Those stories will also include candidates' backgrounds and voting records on key issues if they are incumbents or previous board members running again now.
Those five areas - or districts as they are sometimes referred to - are Areas 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8.
All five stories will have free access online for the public on The Item's website.
The newspaper did the same series in 2022 leading up to that election when all nine board seats were up for election because the board then moved to nine single-member districts from seven districts with two at-large seats.
In part because of that detailed coverage, The Item won first place in the category of Community Service journalism in the 2022 South Carolina Press Association Awards Contest for all newspapers. The (Hilton Head) Island Packet finished second that year in the category, and The (Charleston) Post and Courier placed third.