Crazed Monkey Ian Stevens recently wrote about the issue of city councillor races. It can be a difficult decision in some cases. The race is not nearly as high-profile as the race for mayor, so information is a bit more difficult to come by.

Worse are the races for school board trustee. Ian ends with his article with the following challenge:

there's also the question of choosing a school board trustee, but I'll leave that one for someone else to tackle.

Since, as far as I know, I'm the blogger who seems to be most obsessed with the Toronto municipal election, I thought I would try to help a bit.

The Campaign for Public Education is an organization that has been fighting for students for the past few years. They are the group behind the green-and-white signs you've seen all over Toronto that read "Give students what they need to succeed; Vote for fair funding".

This organization has endorsed a slate of candidates in most of the wards. Here are their choices:

Ward 1: Etobicoke North: Stan Nemiroff (incumbent)
Ward 2: Etobicoke Centre: Kemp Rickett
Ward 3: Etobicoke Lakeshore: Bruce Davis (incumbent)
Ward 4: York West: Stephnie Payne (incumbent)
Ward 5: York Centre: none
Ward 6: York South-Weston: Elizabeth Hill (acclaimed)
Ward 7: Parkdale-High Park: Irene Atkinson (acclaimed)
Ward 8: Eglinton-Lawrence: Howard Goodman
Ward 9: Davenport: Maria Rodrigues
Ward 10: Trinity Spadina: Chris Bolton
Ward 11: St. Paul’s: Josh Matlow (acclaimed)
Ward 12: Willowdale: Eddie Zuniga
Ward 13: Don Valley West: Peter Dotsikas
Ward 14: Toronto Centre-Rosedale: Sheila Ward (acclaimed)
Ward 15: Toronto-Danforth: Rick Telfer
Ward 16: Beaches-East York: Sheila Cary-Meagher (incumbent)
Ward 17: Don Valley East: Zia Ahmed
Ward 18: Scarborough Southwest: none
Ward 19: Scarborough Centre: Daniel Hill
Ward 20: Scarborough Agincourt: none
Ward 21: Scarborough Rouge River: Alimamy Bangura
Ward 22: Scarborough East: none

Biographies of these candidates are presently on the organization's website.

I don't know a lot about school board politics, but I do like the little I know about The Campaign for Public Education. They mobilized this city to fight back for its kids. I would be inclined to follow their advice, except the candidate in my ward (11) has been acclaimed.

On the other hand, if you're voting in the race for Toronto Catholic District School Board, I don't have much to offer.

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