Fallis seeking second term on school board

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This article was published 17/10/2022 (1221 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Trustee hopeful Kim Fallis has had the opportunity to view the city’s school system from a variety of perspectives — as a mother, a trustee during the last municipal term, and as an employee at Brandon University, where many graduates of the Brandon School Division attend.

If re-elected, the upcoming term as a trustee would be her second. Fallis said she was motivated to run for the school board the first time by her desire to give back to the community. After interacting with students during her work as a trustee, she said she’s found another well of motivation as she tries to return to the job.

“I think I’m more invested,” Fallis said, describing how she enjoys it when students show their work to the school board at their meetings. “We’re not just at a boring meeting, we’re actually interacting with the students and understanding what is motivating them, what’s making them excited to go to school.”

Fallis is among 14 candidates vying for eight spots available on the school board within the city of Brandon. Caroline Cramer was acclaimed to be the representative for the board’s rural ward. Voters head to the polls Oct. 26 to elect a mayor, council, and trustees.

Fallis said she knows the importance of education. After graduating from high school, by the mid-1980s she’d found herself stuck, she said, and education was her way out.

“I was a single mother with two children living in Portage, in a dead-end job, and knew that the only way I was going to make anything better was to get some more education,” Fallis said.

In an interview with the Sun, Fallis described how she signed up for a 10-month accountancy program at Assiniboine Community College and upon graduating was hired by Brandon University in 1986, where she’s worked ever since.

Fallis started out in Food Services at BU, then served 20 years as the senior accounts receivable person who would help students secure loans. For the last 13 years, she’s served as administrative assistant to the university’s senate, with one of her duties being to help organize convocation.

Her role at the university gives her perspective, she said. Her work as a trustee can be especially rewarding when she sees a student who once took part in a presentation to the BSD board later walking across the BU campus.

But working at the university has also provided her with a sense that BSD students aren’t getting the education they need to be successful when they move on to college or university, she said.

“I’ve seen many, many students go through our doors, and I’ve seen and heard of many students that struggle,” Fallis said. “I wanted to see if I could bring some of that knowledge to the table to help make it easier.”

Numeracy and literacy are the two biggest areas where students who enter university struggle, Fallis said. Shortfalls in English are of particular concern when a student reaches post-secondary education and essay-writing skills are essential.

Fallis points to school financing as a major issue facing the school board. Aside from fees paid by international students and students from out of the area, Fallis said the board’s hands are tied when it comes to funding.

“We have no way of raising funds, other than what we get from the government and through taxes,” Fallis said, adding that inflation has raised costs. “All our fixed costs, those things that we still have to pay, have all gone up and they’re not keeping pace with what the provincial government is giving us.”

Meanwhile, the provincial government has frozen the division’s ability to increase property taxes as a way to balance budgets, she said, and during last year’s budget deliberations trustees had to make tough choices when they found themselves $2 million short.

“None of us walked out of there with a smile on our face,” Fallis said.

Among the services cut was a popular program in which BSD students attended ACC to learn about nursing, although ACC later stepped up to fund the course instead. Fallis said the choice was to cut the nursing program or the Food for Thought breakfast and snack program that ensures children don’t attend school hungry.

“I think all we can do is continue to lobby the government and show where those funds are being spent,” Fallis said. “Like any other business, our biggest proportion goes to salary. So we have to figure how to increase the funds so that we can cover, give our teachers a decent salary, and then still be able to buy photocopy paper for the schools.”

Fallis said, if she gets re-elected, she would like to see through the completion of Maryland Park School. She said the school, which is already “bursting at the seams,” was designed with an additional eight classrooms. The division has brought in two modular classrooms to ease the pressure.

She added she’d also like to work toward expanding all-day kindergarten to all the division’s schools as a way to take pressure off of parents who struggle to find daycare and to provide more of an opportunity for students to develop social skills and learn.

Fallis has volunteered for a number of Brandon groups, including the United Way, Big Brothers and Sisters, and the Brandon and District Workers Advocacy Centre.

Her two children, now adults, were educated within Brandon School Division.

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