The public has had the opportunity to meet three of the four superintendent finalists. It was former Montgomery, Alabama superintendent Carlinda Purcell's turn last night.

Purcell had the misfortune of being booked on Halloween night, so turnout was not as strong as it was for fellow candidates Jean-Claude Brizard and Tim Mains. And the controversy surrounding her departure from Montgomery - and the leak to the media that virtually dragged her in front of the public - may have raised the bar particularly high for Purcell.

Compared to the first two candidates, Purcell had difficulty engaging the audience. While she answered nearly as many questions as Brizard and Mains, there were only a few moments when her responses sparked a connection. That's unfortunate, and a little surprising. At a meeting before the forum, she was much more personable.

The forums continue to attract an audience, but many of the faces are the same. Given the public outcry concerning the search process and meeting the candidates, attendance in general hasn't lived up to the urgency. Mayor Bob Duffy and City Council members have been noticeably absent.

School Board member Willa Powell says the candidates' performances in the forums have closely matched their interviews.

"There really haven't been any big surprises, except it has been interesting to see how the audience has responded to their individual charisma and qualifications," Powell says.

Tonight's featured candidate is Ingrid Carney, a senior administrator with the Boston school district. The forum is at East High School at 6 p.m. It is also being shown live on Channel 15, and comments can be sent to the city school board's Web site. 

Carlinda Purcell may have been the candidate with the most to gain in her appearance at last night's Rochester superintendent forums, the third in the series of four. Purcell, like finalist Tim Mains, found herself in a difficult situation when her name was leaked to the media last summer.

The leak was compounded by the circumstances of her departure from her last job, as superintendent of Montgomery, Alabama, schools. Following a tense conflict with her, the Montgomery School Board bought out Purcell's contract.

Purcell is the only candidate with superintendent experience and title - the full package. She says that during her tenure in Montgomery, there were impressive gains in student achievement, and Rochester School Board members say they have confirmed that. Nonetheless, she remains a polarizing figure in Montgomery. She has both supporters and detractors there, and the latter have been eager to share their stories publicly.

Purcell hadn't had a chance to tell her side of the story publicly until last night. But when her moment arrived, she didn't elaborate on her fall-out with the Montgomery board.

The question came up more than once, and in every instance she gave vague responses that seemed to raise even more questions.

A similar moment came when she was asked about racism: she asked to put the question aside and get back to it later. The response seemed overly cautious in a presentation that needed some spontaneity.

But Purcell had her high points. She answered a question about poverty with empathy and compassion.

"I think sometimes we use the poverty thing as an excuse," she said. "There's a lot we can do between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. I understand that even though you don't have a lot of resources, you can still do a lot for children."

When she talked about hiring and retaining good teachers, she said the issue isn't always money; factors like school safety are equally important to teachers.

Purcell said she increased attendance in Montgomery by initiating a breakfast program. And to keep students in school requires some flexibility, she said, since some older students may have jobs and other commitments.

Purcell was particularly sensitive to the relationship between the school district and the local economy. "People really don't want to live in a community where they don't have faith in the school system," she said. "They will send their children to a school system they trust will educate their kids and prepare them for life."

Purcell earned her master's degree in early childhood education and her doctorate in education administration and special education. In addition to her Montgomery position, she was superintendent of Warren County, North Carolina, schools from 1995 to 2002.

Ingrid Carney, a senior administrator with the Boston school district, is the last finalist to be featured in the superintendent forums. She will be at East High School tonight at 6.

The superintendent forums ended last night with finalist Ingrid Carney, a deputy superintendent with the Boston school district. Carney exhibited a forceful charm that kept the questions coming in the East High School auditorium longer than any of her co-finalists.

Raising academic achievement, Carney said, is her first priority. Increasing the graduation rate, she said, would naturally follow.

"Increasing graduation rates is more a result of concentrating on the core instruction," she said. "And I think that means that we have to look for ways to make that interesting and more relevant to students. We tend to think that all kids drop out because they can't do the work. Many bright, capable kids leave school because they're not interested."

Her passion, Carney said, is training and developing principals and senior staff. She started a professional development program for principals in the Chicago schools, training 1,800 principals, administrators and lead teachers. Students in schools with principals Carney trained, she said, have been academically outperforming other Chicago schools.

Carney has not directly negotiated union contracts or budget commitments from city or county governments, but said she has contributed to those discussions as a cabinet-level advisor to the Boston and Chicago school superintendents. And she made it clear that she supports unions and the right to form unions, but it has to be a collaborative relationship that puts the needs of students first.

"If I had a magic wand, I would give teachers whatever they want, because I believe they deserve it. They are the ones in the classroom with children," she said. "Teachers need all the support we can give them. The whole thing becomes political because of a scarcity of resources. We have to find a way to work collaboratively."

But some of the best moments in Carney's question-and-answer session came when she responded to somewhat personal questions.

When asked what she did in her leisure time, she dispensed with pretentious academic answers. "Sports and shopping," she said.

And when asked about the most difficult challenges of her 37-year career, the agony of terminating a person she liked socially was at the top of her list.

Carney was intelligent, capable and genuine. She told the audience she had been preparing for the job of superintendent all of her life. And, yes, she did apply for the recent opening for superintendent of the Boston schools (when former Rochester schools superintendent Manuel Rivera declined the job last spring).

Carney has a master's degree in administration from Chicago State University and a doctorate from the University of Illinois. She completes a rigorous superintendent training program with the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation later this month.

People keep saying that this presidential election campaign is too long. For me, it's feeling very, very short. The New York primary is just over two months away, and I'll have to know a lot more about the candidates between now and then.

Last night's debate on CNN helped a bit, in that it pushed Hillary Clinton farther down my preference list. Increasingly, she comes off as too scripted, too harsh, too calculating. And, like Kucinich, angrier than I want a president to be. And Clinton's opinions on key issues - when I can see those opinions clearly - aren't what I want in a president.

I keep hoping that Obama will seem stronger, steelier. He did well last night, but so did the people I most want to hear more from: Biden, Richardson, and Dodd. If I had to vote tomorrow, I'd vote for one of them.

Mostly, last night's debate made me angry, at the mainstream media in general and CNN in particular. The media have focused so much on Clinton and Obama that you'd think there was no one else in the race. It's way too early to narrow the public's choice, and the media have no business doing it.

Wolf Blitzer was particularly dreadful last night, insisting on one-word answers to complicated questions. He either didn't hear or pretended not to hear when Obama answered "Yes, but," to his initial question about giving drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. When Obama tried to elaborate, Blitzer bullied and preened. And when he asked Clinton the same question, he let her come off looking like a strong decision-maker, accepting her clear "no" rather than asking why she had refused to take that stand in a previous debate.

Many in the media treat these televised debates as entertainment, and the commentary following them focuses more on who "won" than on the content. Voters don't have to buy into that, of course. But we'd all learn a lot more if the reporters doing the interviewing treated all of the candidates like the contenders they are.

"Played for a "Sucker": Paul Krugman's sharp attack in the New York Times on Barack Obama's stand on Social Security. Obama is talking about a "crisis" when none exists, writes Krugman. In his attempt to appear bi-partisan, Obama is buying into conservatives' ploy, says Krugman, and is being "played for a fool."

During the last presidential election, the Republicans' wedge issue was gay-marriage.

This year it's undocumented workers.

A fiery exchange between Republican frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani dominated the early part of last night's CNN You Tube debate. Romney accused Giuliani of making New York City the largest sanctuary city in the country.

Giuliani shot back that Romney ran a "sanctuary mansion" while he was governor of Massachusetts. Apparently the former governor unknowingly hired undocumented workers to help with repairs.

The exchange made for good TV, but it was also a childish, schoolboy squabble about a serious national issue.

The fervor against undocumented workers has become so hot that for many Americans, rational discussion about the subject is not allowed.

Instead, we're bombarded with frightening stories of terrorists who might cross the border, thousands of Americans losing their jobs, and taxpayers funding education and health care for Latin Americans working and living here illegally.

Americans are being whipped into hysteria. And underlying it is fear and racism.

Undocumented immigrants have nothing to do with the Iraq War, a falling dollar, and a broken health care system. But that won't stop the fear-mongering.

Just imagine if two undocumented women picking lettuce all day in Arizona wanted to get married. Welcome to the new apocalypse.