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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Yellowknife Education District No. 1 school board (Yk1) is maintaining its trust in current leadership. Earlier this month the board voted to keep its chairperson and vice-chair in place.

"I like the vote of confidence," said chair Allan Shortt, who is returning for his third term. "It's another year of hard work but things have been going really well for Yk1 for quite a while now and we have a great administrator, and all the staff do a great job so it's easy to be a chair when things are going well."

Shortt is joined by John Stephenson, who is also entering his third term, and is back as vice-chair.

"We work well as a team. Steadily between me and John we have the same leadership. People don't like change. Usually they like it when things are going good, just keep your head down to the grindstone and keep working. It's all about the kids and we make sure that it's not about board members or any individual person," said Shortt.

Shortt said one of the major initiatives the board is looking at is renovating J.H. Sissons School.

"We were on the books ahead of St. Joseph School but the fire at St. Joe's pushed that school ahead of Sissons," he said. "I know there have been a lot of parents in limbo wondering what is going on because it triggers a lot of things if we do renovate the school. Then we have to move the students out for the course of the renovations and then back into the new school ... We like the school where it is and we think Sissons is a great school, it just needs to be updated."

Shortt said options for facilities to accommodate Sissons students if needed during the renovations have been discussed, but at this time he would not comment about specifics until more information about the renovations are given to the board.

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