SOMSD Board of Education Elections 2024
Race and Equity Questionnaire
Thanks to all 7 candidates for demonstrating your commitment to equity in our schools by completing the questionnaire and making your answers available to the entire community. This is the 7th year that SOMA Justice has published the BOE answers to questions on Race and Equity. The questions address issues of access, equity, and safety in our district (particularly in regards to vulnerable populations, i.e., POC, queer, special needs, immigration, second-language learners, etc.).
The scores below are based on whether the responses were exemplary, aligned, partially aligned, or not aligned with shared principles of equity and inclusion in education.
A clickable version of the scorecard with direct links to each candidate’s response to each question is available here.
SOMA Justice encourages voters to read the candidates’ thoughtful responses in full and welcomes a larger community discussion about what is best for SOMSD schools.
Full responses are available here: Jeff Bennett, Deirdre Brown, Bimal Kapadia, Bethany Joseph, Paul Stephan, Qawi Telesford, and Arun Vadlamani.
A clickable version of the scorecard with direct links to each candidate’s response to each question is available here.
A note on methods:
Candidates were given 2.5 weeks to answer ten questions. SOMA Justice recruited six anonymous scorers from its membership who were unaffiliated with any BOE candidates to evaluate responses to each question based on a rubric aligned with SOMA Justice’s values. Responses were separated by question, then anonymized and scored in random order.
The scores give a sense of a candidate’s alignment with SOMA Justice’s commitment to justice and equity in education-related topics – aligned, partially aligned, or not aligned based on close and lengthy review. An “exemplary” rating was also given for particularly strong answers where candidates’ answers exceeded the rubric’s expectations.