Now that he’s been elected to the School District 57 board of trustees, Milton Mahoney promised there will be changes coming to the school board and how it responds to the needs of the community.
One of his first orders of business will be to investigate why there’s been a revolving door of superintendents that have come and gone to fill SD 57’s top administrative position.
“I really want to find out why there’s been six superintendents in six years and three assistant superintendent - is it something to do with the leadership of the board, of the ministry, where is the problem?” said Mahoney.
“I really don’t think we can move forward until we resolve that issue.”
The 73-year-old former locomotive engineer won a five-candidate by-election to fill a vacant trustee position for the Prince George electoral area by just 12 votes over second-place Brian Trotter.
In the preliminary results, Mahoney received 293 votes, followed by Trotter (281), Audrey McKinnon (267), Shannon Freeman (221) and Andrew Burton (75).
In the Mackenzie electoral area, Rachael Weber drew 76 votes to defeat David Szucko, who collected 38 votes.
“I’m extremely happy to have been chosen, a little disappointed with the turnout, we only had 114 people come to vote, we really wanted people to get passionate about education and the kids,” said Weber, a 40-year-old mother of two high school students.
“This is vital that Mackenzie has someone there who’s willing to take a stand and support the kids and the decisions that are happening and I’m honoured that people who did come out to vote supported me.”
Weber agrees with Mahoney that one of the first orders of business for the board should be to find a permanent leader from the administrative side. Cindy Heitman took over as acting superintendent in January 2021 when Anita Richardson went on leave after just one year as superintendent. Prior to that, the board hired Rod Allen as interim superintendent in May 2019 after Marilyn Marquis-Forster resigned less than three years after she was hired in 2016 to replace longtime superintendent Brian Pepper.
“We need to fill that role right away,” said Weber. “We need a leader in that position and we need that position filled properly.
“We need to look at all the aspects of the relationships between the First Nations communities and the school district and why it’s been torn for so long. Reading the report from the education minister and find out where we can start improving such things as systemic racism is something that’s very important to us.”
The need for a by-election was created Sept. 13, when former SD 57 board chair Trent Derrick and vice-chair Shuirose Valimohamed, the Mackenzie trustee, announced their resignations from the school board after a ministerial special advisor’s report found systemic anti-Indigenous racism within the district.
But Mahoney is convinced there’s a hidden agenda behind the release of that report last summer.
“The Minister of Education sent two adversaries up to look at the superintendent problem and I’m sure that they found out what the problem was and were told to divert it to systemic racism, because that report is 10 years old,” said Mahoney. “It just seems like they are using School District 57 as a scapegoat but also as a trial. If they can get away with it here, it’s going to go right through B.C.
“Now they have built a 12-point system to put into the school district. Under my plan, I do believe there’s federal jurisdiction, there’s provincial jurisdiction and there is local school board jurisdiction and I do not believe reconciliation belongs within the district of the schools. I believe the school district is solely for the education of the students, not political.”
Mahoney criticized Derrick and Valemohamed’s decision to leave the board.
“We had two people on the board that did resign over what they said was systemic racism, so is that why they really resigned, is that true; my question is why didn’t they stick around to correct it,” he said. “My next thought is, were they the problem. We have to find out.”
Both new trustees agreed the school district can do more to keep Indigenous and special needs students from falling through the cracks.
“As far as Indigenous students go, I don’t want to lower the bar and it’s already starting, the Minister of Education (Jennifer Whiteside) has started to lower the bar and I don’t want that, I want every student to do the best they can and if that means extra help for those who need it, I want it to be there,” said Mahoney.
“The ministry and I are going to be at loggerheads because they want to do the exact opposite and they want to reduce special needs programs. My own ambition is to make the students of School District 57 ready for the world. When they graduate high school and go on to other endeavours they have to be prepared, and lowering the standard is not going to do that.”
Weber said students leaving public schools have to be confident they can go on to colleges and universities feeling confident they can tackle higher levels of learning and she says too many students are not prepared for that jump due to the province’s rubber-stamp policy of advancing younger students to the next grade each year.
“I’m not OK with the fact that students are being passed through with a no-fail policy up until Grade 10,” said Weber, who has worked as an educator for the McLeod Lake Indian Band for 3 ½ years. “The students, if they’re struggling, need to be held back. Not assessing students at a younger age and only getting them assessed when they’re in their high school years is detrimental to kids.
“We have kids in Grade 10 students with Grade 2 reading levels and that’s not OK. Our graduation rates are only successful because students’ programming and their education is being dumbed down to pass them and I’m not OK with that either. The board has to be held accountable for a lot of things and I’m just hoping I can bring change.”
Mahoney grew up in Vancouver and struggled with an undiagnosed learning disability until he was heading into high school, when a teacher recognized that he was dyslexic.
“They passed me just to get rid of me,” he said. “I was classed as not the brightest kid on the block and it was because I couldn’t read, and I fought because I was discriminated against. But in Grade 9 or 10 a teacher by the name of Ken Connelly came out of the navy and he said to me, ‘Your fighting days are over.’ That man took me from failing grades to an A-student. If it wasn’t for that man I don’t know where I would be.”
Mahoney lived in Smithers for 42 years where he ran a farm and also managed a family-owned business based in Alberta that specializes in corporate conflict resolution, which honed his investigative skills, and he plans to utilize that experience to make the board of trustees more effective.
Mahoney thanked the voters and praised the other four candidates and the issues they raised in their election platforms and looks forward to discussing some of those topics with the rest of the school board.
Weber wants to stress transparency in the work the board tackles and said it needs to be more inclusive with parents given more authority to impact decisions made by committees rather than having their concerns ignored.
“We were elected for the people and so we need to work for the people to make sure they understand what’s happening,” said Weber, the community sustainability coordinator for Centerra Gold.
“If we can remember that is for the kids and if we can put our own personal desires and expectations to the side, I think we could be a better district and we can change people’s minds. With that comes mending relationships, transparency, and being honest and it’s hard having the same people that made such a big mess be on the same board to try to fix it, so it’s going to be a bit more difficult but I’m up for the challenge.”
The two new trustees are expected to be officially sworn in to the seven-member public board at or before the next public meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25. The current four-year term for trustees ends in October with the next municipal election set for Oct. 15.
