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 I’ve listened to my fellow trustee candidates and read their literature, and I do wonder what some of them think school trustees do. “Walk the halls and talk to teachers,” one said. “Wander around in the school yards and talk to students.” People get arrested for doing that sort of thing nowadays.

The job is pretty varied, and has changed a lot since my earlier days at the school board table. We no longer set our own school tax rate, and we don’t negotiate the local teachers’ union contract. But while that has taken a lot of the politics out of the job, it hasn’t lessened the demand for what really are high-level organization skills just like the ones I employed in business, consulting, and post-secondary administration, and taught to my Commerce students at UBC and Trinity Western.

But the children are very important nonetheless. If you didn’t love children in this job, you’d soon lose enthusiasm for what you do.
·      It’s going to the schools and seeing the children learn and play;
·      It’s seeing student outcomes improve;
·      It’s keeping more kids in school;
·      It’s finding more viable choices that help meet student needs;
·      It’s improving student safety;
·      It’s helping to create education for a life worth living that makes the tough parts of this job bearable.

But while that’s the best part of the job, it fills only a small portion of the time you give to it. The school district is a big operation:
·      A $155 million dollar operating budget. The city's operating budget, including police, is about $120 million.
·      0ver 2000 employees, making us one of the largest employers in Abbotsford.
·      46 schools plus playgrounds and many other facilities.
·      A large transportation fleet.
·      Two unions.
·      Major capital projects like our new $45 Million Abbotsford Collegiate.
·      And partnership with the Council in the parks, recreation and culture of our city.

Our influence on school children is indirect. Our job is to cast a vision for the district, and to work with our highly qualified senior educators in developing a strategic plan appropriate to that vision. We sign off on budget allocations. We approve short- and long-term goals for the superintendent (who is excellent, by the way), and hold him accountable for results.

And we represent the public interest. But do we know what the various stakeholders who comprise the public want? The current school board has made a modest attempt to hold stakeholder meetings with the District Parent Advisory Council, the police, the city council, and our MLAs. But too many of these meetings are more of the meet and greet variety, usually an hour or so in length.  We spend more time approving field trips, sitting on interview panels for executive assistants and elementary vice-principals, approving middle school department heads, and sifting through anecdotal evidence than we do with assessing the world beyond the classroom door.

Much has to change.
 


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