School governor elections - how do I cast my vote wisely?

[Hallgerda]

It's that time of year again, when one is expected to decide between The Ordinary Mum, The IT Director, Sad Bloke Taking Annual Opportunity To Mention PhD, The Caring Professional, The CV Builder, The Ethnic Minority Community Leader and Something in Entertainment (different names but same basic types seem to crop up all the time).

All of you who are school governors, I'm not putting you down. I'm sure you all do a great job. But how do I vote sensibly in an election in which I don't even know what the contentious issues are, let alone how choosing a particular candidate would make a difference to their resolution.

It's easier when I know the people - after removing obvious loons the choice is usually easy but what do you do when you don't? Do you vote for the candidate most like yourself, or try to get a balance (that one's hard if you don't have the CVs for the members not standing for re-election). Or is there something you can read between the lines that I just haven't spotted?

I'm trying to do the decent thing for once - please help me!

Sorry to hear that, clerkKent. Very odd not telling you who the successful candidates were - and I think the electorate should also have been given the result.

A governing body page on the website would be a very good idea, and I think at least one governor would support that view. At the Year 7 parents' cheese and wine do on Friday, my son's form tutor (I don't feel too comfortable about naming anyone here, but I think you have the necessary information to work out who he is) happened to mention that he was a governor, and talked about the possibility of putting pictures of the governors on the wall on such occasions so that we would know who they were.

If you want to contact the governors, I would have thought sending a letter addressed to them at the school office ought to work, but it's not the same as actually knowing a name, or a face.

I emailed the school yesterday to ask who had been appointed. They replied this morning, and I was not surprised to see that my old mate CS was appointed. I asked the school to forward my email address to him - and we are now in touch.

DS is speaking at the Founders Day Service tomorrow. DW will be there (fauve) but not me .

That's good news about the election result, clerkKent.

Sorry to hear you're missing your son's reading. I won't be there tomorrow, but I'm sure that DS1 will tell me all about it .