Despite public uproar over education taxes and school closures, it is easy to find people willing to run as trustees.
Bill Wells, executive director of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association, said contentious issues actually attract people to serve on school boards.
“When everything is calm, the number of candidates shrinks.”
He sees no lessening of interest in running for the approximately 260 trustee positions in Saskatchewan’s 28 publicly funded school divisions.
The association runs an annual workshop for new trustees to teach them the issues and their responsibilities. Wells said the biggest challenge for new trustees is to learn that they have no authority as individuals.
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“They can’t, as an individual trustee, go into schools and change the bus routes or discipline a janitor.”
He said trustees must function as a group and not think they represent only certain schools or parents. With amalgamation, most divisions have rural and urban schools so the issues are a mixture, creating less segregation of rural and urban representatives.
However, Wells said that last year’s education tax revolt by 100 rural municipalities was a tough challenge for rural trustees.
“Last year some school divisions were paying $10, $20, $30,000 a month in interest. Money was going to banks, not schools.”
He said he hoped the $53 million provided by the provincial government last year to lower education taxes has resolved the matter.
“Whether it would be repeated this year, let’s see what SARM (Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities) suggests to its members.”
Gary Shaddock, a farmer from Ponteix, Sask., who has been a trustee since 1985 and chairs the Chinook School Division board, said while public meetings can become heated, many people tell him they’re glad they’re not in his shoes.
“They realize tough decisions have to be made,” he said.
“People appreciate that we’re willing to face the public. If you meet people, they respect that.”
Shaddock said trustees must consider the emotional impact on a community when a school is closed, but the other arguments are that students need a good academic education and trustees are responsible to all ratepayers.
Shaddock said making decisions about the future of schools hasn’t become easier over the years, “but from experience you get to expect how and when things happen. It is affecting lives.”
