This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Liz Donovan, a board member of both the New Canaan and state League of Women Voters, about the organization’s efforts to educate electors during this local election season. We talk about the League’s online voter guide for New Canaan, which also was the first town in Connecticut to roll out the League’s Vote411 program, which now brings municipal election-specific candidate and other information to more than 40 Connecticut towns. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:
Candidates for the Board of Education this week debated whether changes should be made to the process through which curriculum long has been developed and approved for New Canaan Public Schools. As it is, a team of educators led by the superintendent—known as the Curriculum Leadership Council or “CLC”—draft, continuously review, update and approve curriculum so that New Canaan’s schools are meeting educational standards set by agencies such as the Connecticut Department of Education. The Board of Ed receives regular presentations on curriculum—a practice that has slowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic—and in cases of large-scale changes to those standards, the school board dedicates even more time at its meetings to corresponding decisions such as new classes or updates to the district’s goals and objectives. While Republican candidates for the Board of Ed said they’re not advocating for public meetings of the CLC (such as through appointment of a school board member to it), they called during Tuesday night’s League of Women Voters debate for the ability to weigh in on its development earlier and with greater detail and frequency than the elected body currently does. “I think that what we are pushing for is more oversight, more balanced thoughtful oversight at periodic stages,” GOP candidate Dan Bennett said during the debate, held at Town Hall.
If you were a civil rights leader after Selma in 1965, how might you have responded to the violence and worked to move the cause of voting rights forward for black Americans? This question will be the focus of a Harvard Case Method Project Community Discussion, part of an innovative program offered by the League of Women Voters of New Canaan together with the New Canaan High School Social Studies Department on Tuesday, June 9th, beginning at 6:30 pm at New Canaan High School. Participants will include students, parents, League members, and other interested adults from our community. This will be the first in a series of case discussions that will take place annually. The cases are taken from Harvard Professor David Moss’s book, Democracy: A Case Study.
The League of Women Voters of New Canaan is delighted to announce that Patti Russo, Executive Director of the Campaign School (TCS) at Yale, will be speaking at its Annual Meeting and Luncheon on Thursday, May 28th at the Country Club of New Canaan. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and founding of the League, Russo will talk about how women’s engagement and activism today has been impacted by the struggle for enfranchisement. A dynamic speaker with deep experience in women’s advocacy, Russo is passionate about TCS Yale’s mission: To increase the number and influence of women in elected and appointed office in the United States and around the globe. TCS Yale is a nonpartisan, issue-neutral training program that has launched hundreds of women into the world of politics. It focuses on the common needs and experiences of political women, not on their differences as political partisans.
February 14th is the League of Women Voters’ National Day of Action in celebration of the League’s official 100th birthday. The League of Women Voters of New Canaan will participate by staffing a Voter Registration table at New Canaan Library from 2 — 5 pm. It will also provide information about the League’s People Powered Fair Maps campaign, a redistricting program focused on creating fair political maps nationwide, and the 2020 Census, in which all of us must be counted in order to secure critical funding and Congressional representation for CT. Get registered and be informed! For more information contact the LWVNC at www.lwvnewcanaan.org.
