What Are the Hopkins School Board Candidates Reading?

Tuesday’s Hopkins School Board candidate forum was full of technical discussions about everything from school finances to curricula—but that doesn’t mean the entire discussion was so weighty.

The moderator asked the candidates what books they are reading or have recently finished. The candidates’ answers are below. (Heather Hansen, Gang Gary Jing and Tobias McKenna did not attend the forum. McKenna is not actively campaigning.)

What book would you advise your elected officials to read in order to do their jobs better? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

• Betsy Scheurer Anderson: Books by Canadian author Janet Oke. “I like historical fiction—especially when you’re reading so much of the School Board packets and you need something a little bit lighter. Her stories are about the Canadian Rockies during the early 1900s and about strong families and strong communities, and I really enjoy those.”
• Katie Fulkerson: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. “I really like psychology, and this had a lot of scientific research into why people are divided on different issues. And I am interested in that.”
• Warren Goodroad: An unnamed historical fiction book. “As it turned out, my daughter is taking AP Euro History. So she and I had a discussion about the Yorks and the Lancasters [who vied for power in the Wars of the Roses]. … Thanks to the book that I was reading at the time, we had a nice discussion about that a couple days ago.”
• Michael Doobie Kurus: Harold and the Purple Crayon. “I probably should’ve pointed out before that I’m not just a special education teacher. I’m an early childhood special education teacher, which would explain why my last book I read is Harold and the Purple Crayon. It happens to be a classic I loved growing up. It was one of the first books I read and I know it was because of the imagination, the creativity. You know, what the mind can conceive, the body will achieve. As a little kid, it was just awesome. It could explain why my favorite color’s purple.” Kurus said he also recently read The Latehomecomer—a story about a Hmong refugee family from Laos. “It’s great to hear what some of our families are going through.”  

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