School Trustees Responsible for Wellbeing of Thousands of Students

In episode two of this new monthly program covering Beautiful Plains School Division, we talk to Trustee Kathleen Guillas and School Board Chair Richard Manns about the role of the School Board in school division policies, decisions, and operations. Guillas is a representative for the Eden District to the north and Manns the Carberry District to the south, but both were clear that once elected, trustees represent all of the students in the division and not just their home district.

Ultimately, a school board is responsible for the delivery and planning of educational services within a division. They need to follow the provincial Public Schools Act, but beyond that they are responsible for all policies across the division. For instance, the Public School Act calls for accessibility, but the school board enacts the actual policies to meet the needs of the division. Other areas are around curriculum and transportation policy, which can vary widely when dealing with rural versus urban school divisions.

Each school division has its own needs and challenges, which is why they fought so hard against a proposal by the Manitoba provincial government a few years ago to consolidate the school divisions under a central administrative board.

One of the biggest responsibilities the school board has is setting the budget. Each division has a finite allocation from the government based on how many students they have, topped up by money for special needs groups if you have them and equalisation payments for northern schools or divisions with declining populations. All budget decisions and policies must be set at public meetings, and Guillas says that for all the difficult decisions they have to make regarding budgeting, their overriding policy of “putting the money in front of the kids” makes some of the choices clear. If it comes down to it, they will always choose to meet student needs over luxuries.

Putting all that money into the classrooms, however, means that the budget for things like administration, transportation, and maintenance are tight, and those staffing levels are nearly identical to where they were ten years ago, when the schools were at half the population they are now.

Not every school in the division is growing as fast as the Neepawa schools, but space and staffing are still two of the biggest challenges facing the division. Beautiful Plains School Division encompasses 14 schools with 2,250 students, close to 300 staff, and 22 daily bus routes that cover almost 3,000 km every day. Even though a new vocational school is on the horizon, it’s still almost four years away and they need to figure out how to manage in the interim while several schools are already at capacity. They have requested seven additional portable classrooms for the next school year, and are running out of land to put them on.

The new vocational school is finally coming as the culmination of a long-term effort, including sending capital needs plans and projected enrollment to the provincial government five to ten years ahead of when they anticipated needing the expansion. They also credit Superintendent Jason Young with doing the lion’s share of the work to compile that information and ensure its veracity, and with understanding the needs of the students in pushing for not just the academic track but also the vocational offerings.

Guillas notes in closing that they are responsible for some of the most vulnerable people in the community and it’s a commitment they take very seriously. Manns agrees that they try to do what's best for all of the kids regardless of age, ability, culture, and academic needs. Education is one of the systems that is currently not broken, even if, as Guillas says, sometimes it limps. They work very hard to keep it that way.

The Beautiful Plains School Division board of trustees meets the first and third Tuesday of every month, and other than in-camera portions of the meeting to protect privacy, the meetings are open to the public.