Regardless of the results of the Nov. 6 election, there will be at least two familiar faces and one entirely new one on the Cranston School Committee come January.

Paula McFarland and Michael Traficante have both served the city of Cranston in multiple capacities, and they are ready to continue their service to the district – McFarland in Ward 3 and Traficante as the committee’s citywide representative. Trent Colford Sr., however, is a newcomer to the committee, winning his Ward 4 seat with no challenger.

While the election season has taken it easy on these three candidates, they offer some insight on what the next two years will bring and what they hope to accomplish in the upcoming term.

“I’m just a local guy. I work hard every day. I’ve got a couple kids in the school system and some nieces and nephews and I’ve always said I want us to do the best for our kids – give our kids the best education possible. For me, my motivation was along the lines of what can I do to help? As I look at it, every question that comes before the School Committee, my question is going to be, ‘How is it going to help the kids?’ It’s pretty basic, pretty simple. I want to see that we have the best teachers possible and I want to do the best job possible for the taxpayers.”

- Trent Colford Sr.

“I want to create a Finance Committee that gives an opportunity to have more involvement of all School Committee members and not have one member go off on their own venture. Everybody has a role to play and every person brings a different expertise; we should utilize everyone’s expertise. I will continue to take an active role in our Strategic Planning. I will continue to have a focus on that. I think Strategic Planning is important and it’s our vision of what the future will be for our schools and what we expect from our students, our teachers and even our School Committee. I think our goal is still to advocate on behalf of our students. I view this very much as a volunteer opportunity to give back to my community and advocate for those who don’t necessarily have a voice – children.”

- Paula McFarland

“Our major priority is always financial. We’ve got to clear up this debt. Unless we clear up this debt, we can’t move forward by reinstating many of the programs that we had to either eliminate or reduce, such as the music program, the athletic program and the EPIC enrichment program. We’d like to reinstate all these things, and they are good possibilities if we clear up the debt. We’ve also got to meet all the state requirements to get our schools back up to commended schools, as they were before. It’s the staff that’s going to do it for us. We have to support them in every way we can. That’s our job, to assist the superintendent in any way, shape or form.”

- Mike Traficante