Squamish's two newly re-elected school trustees are hopeful that an end to the current province-wide teacher job action will lead to a resumption in what they called the "collaborative" approach to education in the Sea to Sky Corridor that they have worked to foster during their first two terms on the District 48 board.
Rick Price and Andrea Beaubien, both of whom have served on the board for the past six years, won re-election in Saturday's (Nov. 19) election. Price, the current board chair, was the top vote-getter among the four candidates with 2,292. Beaubien was second with 1,655, earning a seat, but with the two remaining hopefuls nipping at her heels - Bianca Peters with 1,566 and Alice Guss with 1,446.
The board serving public schools in Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton and Devine for the next three years will have just two new members - Patricia MacKenzie, who was acclaimed to the seat in Pemberton, and Rachel Lythe, who won one of the two seats up for grabs in Whistler. Last month, Laura Godfrey was acclaimed to another term serving Squamish-Lillooet Regional District Area D.
Interviewed together on Tuesday (Nov. 22), Beaubien and Price said they weren't quite sure what to make of the election results. They did say they would like to have seen more coverage of education-related campaign issues in The Chief and other media, or perhaps a candidates' forum dedicated to just the school board race.
"I don't know if [the results] is informed voters sending a message or less informed voters scratching off a name on a list," Beaubien said.
Said Price, "Andrea and I came to a stance before the election on some key issues, so if Andrea suffered from those positions, I would think that perhaps I would have suffered from that as well, but doesn't appear to be the case.
"I think a lot of it is name recognition, plus when you're the chair, it gives you a bit better name profile. I do think that [being incumbents] does work in our favour -it probably shouldn't, but it probably does."
In 2005, when Price and Beaubien first took office, a province-wide teacher job action was in progress. Beaubien, though, said relations between local teachers and the board were a lot more "strained" then than they are now, and that's at least partly a result of the past two boards' efforts to foster a more collaborative working relationship with teachers.
"Even Beth [Miller, president of the Sea to Sky Teachers' Association] has said it's been a more collaborative relationship - which is not the same as always agreeing," Price said. "Our goal there is to maintain that sort of relationship so that we can get back to working together for students and for education."
The two trustees voiced a desire to see the current job action resolved as soon as possible so that teachers and administrators can sit down and begin working in earnest on a district-wide education plan that sets out a series of goals for improving student learning and strategies for how best to achieve them.
"These are goals that will only be achieved if they're developed collaboratively - in concert with the teachers," Price said. "When the job action is over, the important work of formulating that plan begins."
Another priority is negotiating and signing an aboriginal education enhancement agreement with the area's six First Nations -Squamish, Lil'wat, N'Quatqua, Samahquam, Skatin and Douglas. The current five-year agreement is almost at an end, and it's important that the two parties agree on a strategy for improving school success rates among First Nations students, Price said.
At the moment, the district's overall Grade 12 graduation rate is around 80 per cent, while the rate for Aboriginal students is around 45 per cent, Price said. Both numbers are close to the provincial average. With a sound strategy for meeting all students' needs, he said both numbers can be improved and the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students' success can be significantly narrowed.
And it's not just about graduation rates. Success starts with giving parents and teachers the tools they need to prepare youngsters for learning even before they enter kindergarten and working to their strengths all the way up through high school, Price said.
"Graduation is a gross measure of our success - but among the kids who graduate, there's a wide range of options and skill sets that those kids have, so we need to dig a bit deeper than grad rates to find out what's really happening," he said.
"A possible scenario is that we could hold our grad rate steady at 80 per cent, but you could make huge strides within that to ensure that more students who are graduating get the tools they need for postsecondary education."
