School Board Candidates Answer: What's the Best Part About the District?

So much election coverage focuses on the negative.

To some degree, it's the nature of the beast. People look to their elected officials to improve things in their neighborhood/school district/county/state/country. The questions that come up are, naturally, about things that are not up to par and need to be addressed.

But I decided to take a break from the hot topics of the day and ask School Board candidates Sheryl Cerniglia and Mark Verhalen a different kind of question - "What do you like most about the Oak Creek-Franklin School District?"

Here were the responses I got:

Verhalen said it's hard to pick one thing out because Oak Creek has a good school system across the board. But he pointed to the district's ability to prepare kids for college, and specifically, the high school's Advanced Placement offerings.

He said his kids took advantage of those courses and were much better for it when they got to college. Oak Creek should be proud of its academic rigor and pushing those types of classes to students, he said.

"Enabling kids to have more of a hand on things when they go to college is one thing that really stands out to me," he said.

Cerniglia, meanwhile, said her favorite part of living in the school district is its "sense of community." 

She noticed it when she was a new parent taking her child to school for the first time, and she said it still exists now. Parents rally around each other, teachers work together and the entire community simply wants what is best for the kids, she said.

"I've been involved with lots of things in the school district," she said. "And what always struck me was how much the community stands together."

For more election coverage, read what the candidates had to say , as well as our .