seventeen's continuing coverage of town meeting twenty nineteen and we are speaking today with margaret bass who is a candidate on contested candidate for the want to ski school board we're so glad you're here margaret thank you i'm glad to be here you're running for the three year term i am all right well why don't we start with telling us why you're running and what qualifies you for the position i love kids i love schools i'm an educator i've been an educator for forty years i started teaching and public schools of my home state of mississippi and early seventy's and i'm moving from public education to college and universit work and i did that for twenty five years and i'm really pretty committed to public education i've only been in new skete two years but i absolutely love the community it's just the best place to live  ever and so we need a lot of things and when you ski and i want to do where i can to make things happen and specially for the kids do you have priorities  you name the top three things you would like to get to work on in the school district my priorities are the school districts power to he's right i'm one hundred percent in favor of a bond issue that coming to the public in may have done the tour of the community toured the school district i've seen vision of the architects of the poor and school administration so know i understand the importance of the renovations for the school there is overcrowded right now there's a great need for space but also upgrade in academic expectations for the school and equally important green space right places for kids to play and so they can look out windows and see green and stuff like that so i completely supportive and use for the school budget i do absolutely right in the proposed proposed budget that the board is bringing forth to the public i am completely in support of that and what's  r observation of this thing called the opportunity gap and do you think that there's enough opportunity for the children in the school district well mostly no right i think when you ski gets a pretty bad rap from in general and in particular from from many people external to it and some who live there i recently spent a morning at high school and the question from several kids was why do people think we're so to bad place right now and that it's a difficult question to answer when you're talking to a kid except to say you're really not and may be people don't know you don't know and don't know the place at all and so when i see i see actually among the best school districts with which you know i have ever been had any affiliation whatsoever because when you walk into a news do you walk into the world and what better education could there be for our children than to be in a space where people speak multiple languages and come from all over the world in various national costume is the most fascinating school district that i've ever been in in my life and i think it's extremely valuable what what they offer but you know we live in a working class community where there a lot of poverty and so we have hungry children right we have children who don't have enough clothes to wear and so that's for me you know those are the cons of services that w new ski provide us did other school districts may right but not to the extent that we knew ski has to and i think the district does the great job of that with not a whole lot of resources and given the diversity of the student body in the community how do you think the question of unconscious racial bias is addressed do you think that's something that people are aware of and working with yes or no may not think that the precepts of the school district or all unconscious racial bias right a don't think that the perception of the windows  would be the same if it were not racially diverse and it working class area you know i don't think there would be mean the number of middle class white parents ski to another school district who said to me it's because i need my children to be equal in a better school so nobody's go say well if it did to me black and brown people in that school right but the relationship between race ethnicity and social class is great and it's no more evident in vermont then it is so works tremendously hard to address issues of its unconscious bias and bias in general it is unfortunate that the staff does not reflect in a more comprehensive way the community but my sense is they're working pretty hard to do that so we're we're making a shift to a portfolio based assessment of students do you think when a ski's geared up for that ready for that what needs to be done to make that shift say they're ready to began twenty twenty and twenty twenty and there is g x i think yes that they are preparing students for college and career and playing and as i have read it is x seventy seven think so yeah the plan as i have read it seems reasonable and doable i'm always a little skeptical of these kinds of quote plans that come filter from into teach outside the school district and school districts have to figure out how to adapt them for their particular communities but when this is going to give it two hundred percent for sure so speaking of those entities that and the state school board in the legislature do you are there any any messages that you would have as a school board leader for those entities it would like them to be aware of as they make decisions that's a tough question because there is no sort of administrative bureaucracies have to do what they do right and to sort of i would say i would say in two vermont's credit it's the way of funding schools right as well as i can understand it and i've read a pretty good bit about it makes sense in ways that other districts don't do so that there is built in to the funding equitable way of funding schools based on property taxes that doesn't work and so to its credit for man has come up with a better plan and i think so one of things you're touching these capital you know improvements are for empty classrooms or what's your projection on my projection is that at the worst we're going to be flat right best case scenario is that we're grow and that you know that would depend that interpretation depends on the person who's whose you know the perceptions of the person but i do know that now we're in a school dist we're in a school a building built for five hundred students and we have eight hundred sixty five right so we'll have to take quite a drop to be be a facility dick can accommodate even the students that i mean we can lose what three hundred plus students and still  need space so i don't i don't think that's going to i think we'll need more rather than less as time passes and what other capital needs do you see in the school district future that we should be planning for i think that and i don't know if this comes under i mean it's school district because it's kids but our kids need a place to play we need a teen center we don't we don't restored justice panel manager for the city of new ski and so that many of the juveniles i see i'm seeing because they don't have any space they have no place and all the you know meyers pool and see i was very calm controversy oh and continues to be you know despite the fact that both the outcome of the vote was positive but and  i understand both sides but i'm committed to that space because it provides an opportunity for children that we just know having witnessed are there other types of interventions that would benefit the young people i think so i mean we are the group of us now who are kind of scratching our heads and trying to figure out where actually looking in spaces that could be possible places for kids  great coffee who is the community services director and i are doing our best to figure out how the school resource officer who is really great is also bringing us together to talk about that because we all see that some of the problems that we have with the kids in the communities because they don't have anything else to do  teenagers look for arrests and you want to give them some healthy risks to you that's right we do you know so i just want to ask this question because i think it's on the minds of a lot of people thinking about leadership which is how do you rate i think we have to right i think the the line that i draw in relation to political compromise is when i'm not going to ever compromise my ethical or moral values right that's not going to happen i'm open to listening to most people and their points of view and even engaging in conversations and looking for points where compromise is possible but we're in a pretty difficult climate right now and so i would say that i remain open and and certainly have seen a number of places where conversation can can happen you know for people i mean we describe ourselves now on as different sides which i think is ridiculous but there is there is room and space in the middle on most issues for conversation and i would hope that i'm i can engage in those kinds of conversations with people who are or seem to be on you know the side or in a different place how are you know we would find that well it sounds like in the work you're doing in community remediation that you have experience in bringing people together and thinking i track right through problems that maybe people have different views on or i  try and and vermont is vermont so that it's been it's been some progress is slow and steady i think that  the sort of character a characterization of vermont is a white space is that's tough to get through right it's tough to get through that perception and say well not exactly right and particularly in the case of one new ski right not exactly and we have a community here that is not a white space and because of that we have some demands that are remarkably different from any place else in this state and so we made sort of suggestions about what those demands are some of which require funding right can be difficult because the response is well we have other working class communities there are other poor people and vermont and that is quite true but there's no the community in vermont that needs what w city need and that we cannot provide it unless we have the resources to do that and do you think their support from the leadership of an escape for that i do yeah yeah no question about that yeah for sure and where would you like to see more support coming from where he's saying that needs to be shored up to a teen what you're describing that's a hard one i think  some resentment that i have certainly heard toward i hate the term toward the new american communities some resentment about the changes that must be as a result or being able to accommodate these communities there's some conversation about dating people participate in local elections that's going to be a huge debate but you know changes heart changes hard you know and it's interesting because when his skis always been the most diverse community for years yeah one hundred years yes yeah and a working class community with french speaking people first is the english in the irish and you know there has been you know a long legacy of witness keep characterized in the way that you're describing frogs across the pond was one of the terms and then also the internal conflicts among the people yes yes but i mean you know i think we'd be kind foolish not to acknowledge the fact that yes there have been a waves of immigration too with new skete but this wave is black and brown that makes a difference this wave of black and brown is looks different and speaks a language is with which we are not many of us are not familiar has cultural practices that are not quote worsen that makes a difference the demand sport for this community a remarkably different and it it also requires an openness that some people just haven't quite gotten there yet so in your closing comments would you like to state what you hope to accomplish and what you hope for when  hope to be the best school board member that i could be i like to be present in the schools and present in the community i'm completely supportive of the superintendent of schools in windows be completely term it is uncontested for wineskin school board we're so glad to have spent some time with you thank you for watching and stay tuned for continuing coverage of town meeting twenty one nine hundred great thank you so much