Following up on yesterday's posts (and with advance polls still open in Regina's municipal election), I'll close with a quick comment on the public school board elections.
Under most circumstances, I'd be relatively unconcerned about school board elections based on the province's authority (and propensity) to take over decision-making power over education whenever it chooses to do so, while using the boards as scapegoats otherwise.
But the most recent term did offer a fairly compelling example of the circumstances in which a regressive school board can do significant harm to students' educational environment. So I'll work from a fairly simple set of premises in determining which candidates deserve support.
First, voters certainly shouldn't be rewarding the trustees who used their position to make specious excuses to keep Pride out of schools. In addition to the then-chair Katherine Gagne who is now running for Council, Tanya Foster in Subdivision 5 was one of the opponents of the original Pride motion. And Queen City For All has done effective work in testing where this year's candidates stand.
From there, there's again a strong set of individual candidates which could make for a majority of the Board. The RDLC has endorsed Cecilia Prokop (Subdivision 2), Sarah Cummings Truszkowski (Subdivision 5) and Tara Molson (Subdivision 6), while there's another set of candidates worthy of support including Ted Jaleta (Subdivision 1), Stephen Safinuk (Subdivision 4), and Lacey Weekes (Subdivision 7).
We thus have the ability to make sure that the next Board ensures a safe and inclusive space for all students - and hopefully we'll see that reflected next time human rights are up for a vote.
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