We have some trustee issues

October 30th, 2006

I was brought up in a family of voters. I’ve never missed an election. I’m one of those people who encourage all my friends to vote and I get frustrated when people interviewed on the news admit they who don’t know who the candidates are. As a result, I’m very embarrassed to say that I’ve never taken the time to make an informed decision about who to choose for school board trustee. It’s often not until I’m faced with a ballot of unfamiliar names that I realize it’s too late to figure it all out.

This year, I did my research, and I wrote an article for this week’s Eye Weekly on the issues being debated in trustee elections across Toronto.

Trustees may not receive a living wage -- despite a recent pay hike, they still only get somewhere between $10,000 to $20,000 a year for their work -- but many of the issues they deal with are the same as those that top mayoral candidates Jane Pitfield and David Miller have been debating leading up to the Nov. 13 vote. As former trustee Fiona Nelson has pointed out, trustees are "the only elected officials whose sole responsibility is to take care of the needs of children."

You can read the full article online here.

One thing I didn’t mention in the article is that many of the people who run for trustee often end up running for city council later on — another reason to pay attention to who’s representing you on your school board.

Many of the trustees turned city councillor are also women. Of our 13 female city councillors, at least 9 of them first served as school board trustees. These include Jane Pitfield, Shelley Carroll, Paula Fletcher, Pam McConnell, Suzan Hall, Sandra Bussin, Gloria Lindsay Luby, Maria Augimeri and Frances Nunziata. As far as I can tell (I just went through councillors’ bios on the City website), only two of our male councillors first entered politics by being elected to a school board: Mike Del Grande and John Filion.

To find information about who’s running for Trustee in your area, People for Education have set up a great website that provides information on who’s running, what trustees do, and where you can vote.

Illustration from Eye Weekly.

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Thank you for this excellent article and most helpful information. I've always wanted to know who to vote for school trustee but never knew where to get a view of who's running and some backgrounder -- at a glance.

I'm embarrassed to say, however, as I look at the trustees' site, I don't know the name of my community -- it must be different than the ward name, because I cannot find it.

Anyway, thanks for a great article! I'll definitely be circulating it.

Blogging Toronto's 2010 election

October 30th, 2006