SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Public schools trustee Mira Hall says school board members are reluctant to run again next term because the workload has quadrupled over the last term.

Yellowknife Education District 1 trustees Mira Hall, left, and Terry Brookes, seated with Tram Do, director of corporate services, won't say whether or not they will run for re-election this fall. Hall said workload has significantly increased over the last term. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo

None of the trustees on the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 school board are willing to say whether they will seek re-election this fall. Hall said she suspects trustees are feeling overloaded because the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) set out a number of programming goals under "very short time lines" that they wanted the school districts to accomplish this term but didn't provide funding to help school boards realize them.

In the summer of 2012, the department announced $1 million would be taken from special education programming and would be funnelled into early childhood development. In February of 2012, the legislative assembly passed an anti-bullying measure, which meant schools had to come up with a safe schools plan. Hall said schools had to draft new anti-bullying policies and provide logistical plans as to what they'd do in case they had to declare an emergency lockdown.

"Basically ECE would tell us what they wanted to do and it has tended to be very short time lines," she said

Full-time schooling for four-year-olds (junior kindergarten) was announced in February 2014. By May of that year, NWT schools learned they'd be losing more than $7 million from their budgets. Hall said Yk1 got the word only a month from the June due date for its budget.

"We found out that we were going to experience a several hundreds of thousands of dollars cut from our budget," she said. "And so we had to completely go back and redo our budget."

Yk1 trustee Terry Brookes said workload demands on trustees were a bit higher over the last term than they've been over his 20 years on the board. He said new programming launched by ECE has put pressure on school administration.

"In one sense the demands are greater on administration. They're the ones that have to make things work," he said.

He said the hierarchy of importance - as far as the public is concerned - shows teachers at the top of the list. Brookes used the analogy of an airplane flying over Great Slave Lake and who would be the least important passengers on the plane should it crash.

"(If trustees were) flying over Great Slave Lake and we crashed into the water, so what? Maybe there would be some cheers," he said. "If the DC-3 took off and it had all the senior administrators and it crashed into the water and they all died, the only question people would ask is, 'Did the treasurer still live because then she can sign the cheques?'

"If the teachers took off in the DC-3 and it crashed the system would collapse."

Hall said she enjoyed her first term on the board but things took a turn for the worse in her next.

"First term was a really positive experience and I felt like I could work on the things I wanted to work on. And over this term I feel like I haven't had the capacity to do as much as I wanted to do because it was just overwhelming," she said.

She said she thinks ECE has had the right idea in most of their programming in trying to tackle disturbing statistics in the territory concerning early development and low graduation rates. But they don't have money to back up their plans.

"It's really like they see these things that they want to do, and then they treat their budgeting completely differently," she said.

Amber George, communications co-ordinator for the education department, stated in an e-mail that the Education Act and accompanying regulations set out trustee responsibilities and those have not changed over the last term.

Simon Taylor, chair of Yellowknife Catholic Schools, said workload on his board was greater this term and it does add to trustees schedules' which are already crowded by committee meetings and board meetings, not to mention their day jobs.

"(Trustee work) is stuff we do in our spare time," he said. "It is a lot. But you sign up for that. I don't for a second regret when the government decided to introduce junior kindergarten or safe schools or any of those things. Our board has concerns about the funding process and making sure that we're not just watering down our education system.

"Has it been a lot? Yes, it's not been an easy thing but I don't think it's a bad thing."

Trustees at both school districts are paid a token honorarium for their time: regular Yk1 trustees are paid $8,000 a year while the chair gets $12,000 and the vice-chair $10,000; Catholic trustees receive $7,500, the chair gets $10,000, and the vice-chair gets $8,500.

Taylor said he hasn't decided whether he'll be running again for personal reasons.

Steven Voytilla, a first-term trustee with the Catholic district, said he's planning to run again even though his duties took up more time than he expected.

His daughters attend Catholic schools and so he enjoys being able to the serve the system in which they're getting their education, he said.

Trustee John Dalton, who has served the Catholic board for nine years in total, said he's leaning toward running again and will know for certain by April.

He said the workload this term was significant and he wound up doing a lot of reading on his free time.

"It is a lot of work," he said. "But that didn't surprise me."

Miles Welsh, YCS's vice-chair, said he plans on running again but isn't entirely certain.

"Right now I plan on running - but I don't want to be drawn and quartered if I have to drop out," he said.

Catholic trustees Francis Chang, Erin Currie and Amy Simpson have not confirm whether they're running again by press time.

Trustee elections are set for Oct. 19.

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