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This article was published 22/10/2014 (3152 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CAN women finally win half or more of Manitoba’s school boards seats today?

Women have consistently held more than two out of every five school trustee positions across the province, far higher than women’s representation in any other level of government.

Female school trustees already outnumber men by eight on 2014-2018 school boards — they’ve been acclaimed.

Today’s school board elections will not even produce a vote in many places — 61 per cent of the seats outside the largest cities have already been filled by acclamation, or not filled at all.

There are 13 rural seats with no candidates, including three in Winkler, that new boards will fill by appointment.

But from all those acclamations, there are already eight more women than men who have won seats.

Across Manitoba, 10 more women than men registered to run in this election. However, women are a minority of candidates in the city everywhere but in Seven Oaks, and in Winnipeg School Division there are 19 men running for nine seats and only 10 women — even though the WSD has a recent history of female-majority boards. Maybe not this year.

The WSD has only men contesting four of its nine wards, and 18-year veteran Mike Babinsky is running in a fifth ward.

There are 122 people running for 57 seats in the six city divisions and Seine River School Division’s Ward 1, which includes the St. Norbert area of Winnipeg. The Division scolaire franco-manitobaine has already elected its four urban trustees, all men.

There are 16 incumbents not running, the most retirements in recent memory, and two seats have been vacant since the deaths of Ric de la Cruz in Seven Oaks and Shirley Timm-Rudolph in River East Transcona.

There is an unusually large turnout of very young candidates aged 18 to 22, including Tanjit Nagra and Candace Maxymowich in Louis Riel, Dakota Kochie in River East Transcona, Chris Clacio in Seven Oaks and Luigi Imbrogno in the WSD.

Once again, school board elections have attracted only a handful of aboriginal candidates: Kevin Settee and Jerald Funk in WSD, Karen Beaudin in Seven Oaks and Rockford McKay in St. James-Assiniboia.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca