Sefton voted in as school board chair

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This article was published 14/09/2011 (5458 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new school year has yielded a new chair for the Brandon School Division’s board of trustees.

Mark Sefton was voted in as the board’s 2011-12 chairperson at its inaugural meeting earlier this month, taking over from one-term chair Marty Snelling.

Sefton, a former BSD vice-principal and teacher, says the board’s main goal this year needs to remain firmly focused on student achievement.

“This past year, we attained a 90.53 per cent graduation rate, which is tremendous and surpassed what we had even set as a goal,” he said. “That was exciting, but you never want to rest on that because student achievement leads to adult success and, therefore, student achievement has always got to be No.1 for us.”

Another important goal for the board this year will be the march toward greater transparency, Sefton noted — starting with the possibility of live webcasts of their public meetings.

“We think that that would increase the transparency and maybe add to the community engagement, too,” he said. “In our minds, transparency and engagement go hand-in-hand. The more engaged people are, the more likely they are to really parse through what’s going on and then the transparency comes along with that.”

Snelling lost out on the chair role to Sefton and was, instead, acclaimed to serve as Sefton’s vice-chair for the year.

In accepting the role, Snelling commented that he worked well with Sefton and was looking forward to the year ahead.

“I really believe in education and education is the way to the future for everyone in our society,” he said. “I will fight hard for that no matter what position I am in as a trustee. I will give 100 per cent support to Mark, that is not a problem. I just look forward to next year. We had a great first year together (since the October 2010 election). I look forward to moving the 90 per cent graduation higher as a team here.”

The board is technically running short-handed for the next few weeks, as veteran trustee and former board chair Jim Murray was granted a leave of absence in late August to run for the provincial NDP in the constituency of Brandon West.

If unsuccessful after the Oct. 4 election, Murray will have his full duties on the board returned.

Prior to that, however, Murray will find himself on the other side of the board table, as the BSD is teaming up with the Brandon Teachers’ Association to host a candidate forum tomorrow night.

Sefton said they’ll be asking candidates in Brandon East, Brandon West and Spruce Woods how they would fight for better education funding for the division.

“We believe Brandon students are being short-changed in the funding formula,” he said. “Historically, Brandon is funded at one of the lowest rates of the province and adding to that in the past couple of years has been the whole English as an Additional Language thing. Today, about 15 per cent of our students are EAL learners and, with that, comes additional cost.”

The forum is slated for 7 p.m. at the Victoria Inn’s Imperial Ballroom. It is open to the public to attend.

» adowd@brandonsun.com