The following are candidates' responses to the following questions: Incumbents only: With School District 43's recent difficulties, which resulted in $13.4 million in cost cutting, and a forensic audit noting lack of control and monitoring resulted in a deficit in 2012/'13, why should anyone vote for you, an incumbent who was on the board when it happened? To non-incumbents only: If you are elected, what issue would you bring to the board's attention? To all: What is your reason for running for school trustee? Also: Do you think there is enough transparency about what goes on in the school district? If not, how would you change it?
Executive director Children of the Street Society, school trustee for nine years, lives in Coquitlam
Deficit issue: "It's my job to ask questions and to make sure [that] if there is something that I don't understand, I push it until I do understand and to ask more questions."
Why run: "I have raised eight children and they have all gone through the public education system. I'm right in the classroom with the children in this district and I feel I have something to contribute that is much-rounded insight about the different levels of education. And I still have a child in school so I am also active as a parent."
Transparency: "I think there is [enough transparency]. I think it's also the responsibility of the community to reach out, to come to school board meetings, go to the website, ask questions. Information isn't going to come to them. People have to reach out and if they reach out the information's there."
