Local funding a major focus during trustee forum

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This article was published 13/10/2022 (1223 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With another Brandon School Division budgeting season on the horizon, the candidates who are running to sit on the 2022-26 board of trustees used much of their time during Wednesday’s forum to address these financial issues directly.

The trustee forum took place at the Victoria Inn and featured 12 of the 14 candidates who are looking to secure a seat in Ward 1 (city) of the school board.

Ward 2 (rural) representative Carline Cramer also took part in Wednesday’s forum, even though she was acclaimed last month due to being the only candidate to register for that district.

While Wednesday’s event, the first in-person BSD trustee forum since the COVID-19 pandemic began, covered a variety of topics, one of the recurring themes of the night was the financial strain the board is facing due to interference from the province.

Current BSD chairperson Linda Ross told Wednesday’s crowd that the biggest issue facing public education today is the funding, especially since provincial funding is not keeping pace with the rate of inflation.

“We simply do not have enough money to provide the kind of education that our children deserve,” she said. “And the situation is not improving … so we certainly need to address that problem with the province.”

Prospective trustee Bonnie-Lynn Mills, who unsuccessfully ran in the 2020 school board byelection, also addressed this issue during her time on the mic.

Mills voiced her support for local taxation to fund BSD programming, especially since the Manitoba government is planning to phase out education property taxes provincewide.

While this move is designed to save homeowners money, Mills said this strategy is depriving BSD of its ability to fund local programming that is unique to the division.

“Every student deserves an equal opportunity for good education and what that looks like is going to be different in every community,” she said.

“That local taxation is going to be able to provide the dollars that we need to address things that are specific to [those schools] and help us to continue to grow our schools and help our students where they need it.“

The school board’s inability to collect property taxes had a major impact on the 2022-23 operating budget, resulting in a $1.2-million deficit that forced trustees to make major cuts to programming and support staff.

One of the many questions posed during Wednesday’s forum asked trustees what they would do with a hypothetical $5-million boost in funding, which prompted current trustee Delvina Kejick to say that she would hire more support staff and square away some more space for Indigenous language programming on the budget.

Meanwhile, trustee Blaine Foley said he would use the hypothetical $5 million to ensure that all-day, every-day kindergarten was expanded to every BSD school instead of just targeted institutions.

Foley also stressed his desire to construct more school buildings within the division to better accommodate the growing student population.

“My preference would be to build schools at a rate that’s keeping pace with enrolment … rather than [putting] portable classrooms in football fields,” he said.

Candidate Breeanna Sieklicki, who also unsuccessfully ran in the 2020 byelection, acknowledged the importance of securing more local funding, believing this money should go toward getting the division “back to the basics of education.”

“Math, science, English and history, it all seems like sometimes …. those are getting put on the back burner and things that can get taught by parents are being taught in schools,” she said.

“We need to focus our funding [on] making sure that our children succeed in the basics of education and making sure that nobody falls behind. There were almost 12 positions cut in the last budget, so now you have to wonder which students are going to fall behind because of that.”

Other candidates who participated in Wednesday’s forum include Jason Gobeil, Calistus Ekenna, Kirk Carr, Rebecca Anhalt, Chyrel Young, Brad Rusnak and Kim Fallis.

Candidates Duncan Ross and Jim Murray could not attend Wednesday’s forum.

However, profiles for all 14 candidates can be read in full through the City of Brandon’s official election web page at brandon.ca.

Election day is Oct. 26, but local residents can also vote early Oct. 20 and Oct. 22 at city hall and the Keystone Centre, respectively.

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