Name: Constance Mercier
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired.
Family: Widowed. Four children, seven grandchildren.
Community involvement: Former Auburn School Committee member.
1. Why do you think you are the most qualified or best candidate for this seat?
I tried to do good for everybody. When I was on the school board before, there was a meeting, and they wanted to know all the repairs for all the schools. One was $20,000 and one was $25,000. I was the only one to vote for less. I try to save money and give good quality to the kids. I want the kids to have the best.
2. What is the most important issue facing the Auburn School Department and how would you address it? Be specific.
I don’t know anything about what’s going on now. I’m being honest. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m willing to learn.
3. What can you do as a School Committee member to improve test scores and graduation rates?
Maybe explain what happened to me. I want the best for these kids. They should not drop out of school. When I was on there before, there was a young man who was thinking about quitting school. I said “don’t do it. Don’t do it. You’ll be sorry.” I would try to encourage all the kids to graduate from high school because it is their lives.
Name: Daniel Poisson Sr.
Age: 59.
Occupation: Automotive technician and business owner.
Family: Wife of 38 years, 3 grown children, 6 grandchildren.
Community involvement: Recreation Advisory Board for 20 years, School Committee for 11 years , donate my time and resources to local events.
1. Why do you think you are the most qualified or best candidate for this seat?
I’ll try to make the best decisions for all parties involved, work with other members to make our school system the best we can with the budget we have. Willing to listen to concerns that people have and make the best decisions that make sense to help resolve the concerns.
2. What is the most important issue facing the Auburn School Department and how would you address it? Be specific.
I think the most important issue we have right now is trying to maintain the older schools that we have and try to budget the money to do the projects that we need to do. We are working on it and have plans to try to keep up with the things that need to be done, but there may be some hard choices in the future. The cost of everything makes it very hard to keep up with the work that needs to be done. I think one cost-saving method could be to combine schools in the future if it makes sense. It could be one way to help defray maintenance costs and overhead costs. It’s very hard to always ask the taxpayer to pay for all the costs when funds are needed, so we need to find different ways to budget the money that we have.
3. What can you do as a School Committee member to improve test scores and graduation rates?
We, as a School Committee and school staff, have worked hard to improve test scores in all grades and they are getting better over time. It is a very hard and long process to get students to achieve the goals of getting better grades and improving test scores in all grade levels. There has been a lot of of work already done to achieve one of the highest graduation rates of any public school in Maine. We are always trying to reach the ultimate goal of 100% graduation rate. We just need to keep doing what we need to do to keep students in school learning and having fun.