Welcome to the open thread for tonight's Orange County Board of Education candidate forum. Two incumbents and two challengers are running for three seats.

You can observe the forum at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2012/forums/county-school-board.

We hope you'll use this open thread to post your thoughts and reactions. Also, if you want to propose additional discussion topics, you can reach the editors during the forum via Twitter, Facebook, and the contact page. The forum moderator will have final say in question selection.

The candidate filing period for the May 8 primary elections begins today at noon. In Orange County, 10 seats in various state and county races are up for grabs.

As you probably know by now, Laura Nicholson has requested a runoff against current School Board Chair Anne Medenblik.  The special runoff election will be held on June 22nd - the same day as the U.S.  Senatorial showdown between Democrats Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham.

Under the rules for the non-partisan school board race, a candidate may request a runoff if one or more top vote getters fails to win more votes than the total number of votes cast divided by the number of candidates running.