SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Voter turnout for the city's two main school boards was down Monday night from last election.

Yk1 board election Elected Terry Brookes - 857 John Stephenson - 779 Duff Spence - 732 Tina Drew - 668 Allan Shortt - 578 Jay Butler - 557 Rajiv Rawat - 554 Not Elected John Simpson - 494 Satish Garikaparth - 399 Zhong Liu - 368 Source: Yellowknife Education District No. 1 Catholic Schools board election Tina Schauerte - 366 Simon Taylor - 356 Steven Voytilla - 351 John Dalton - 343 Miles Welsh - 337 Erin Currie - 334 Revi Lau-a - 318 Not Elected Amy Simpson - 312 Francis Chang - 303 Source: Yellowknife Catholic Schools

Evelyn Straker, returning officer for both school board elections, said there were 1,325 people who voted in the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 election and 628 at the Yellowknife Catholic Schools board. Each person could cast seven votes for one of the two boards.

Yellowknife Education District No. 1 saw 5,896 votes cast to elect its seven-member board, down from the 2012 election which saw 6,339 votes cast.

Duff Spence won his seat back after sitting out the last election and earned 732 votes.

"I am excited because there are a couple of new people and some who have been there before," he said

Spence said there he recognized the drop in the number of voters and said he would support discussing ways to improving turnout with the municipality.

"I think the school board and municipality should work to make it more efficient and maintain a high level of participation," he said, adding people were probably less likely to vote if they didn't have a stake in the contest. "I think people were there to vote but I don't think they voted for everything they could have voted for."

Terry Brookes won the most votes on the Yk1 board with 857 and will be entering his eighth term after completing 21 years as a trustee. He said this indicated to him that people had continued trust in his ability and that his approach of always continuing to learn about the process was successful. He said he would be in support of trying to get a better voter turnout next time around as well.

"Many years ago you would go to one booth and get a municipal ballot and school board ballot at the same time because it was combined," he explained. "The last two elections it was split and you would get one ballot at one table and then go to another table for the school ballot.

"From my numbers the turnout was obviously down."

He said the figures could have been for a number reasons including that there were multiple elections Monday and that it is possible some people may have been disinclined to vote for school board if they had to travel to multiple polling stations.

Brookes commended Tina Drew for being the only woman who ran and succeeded in the election and said the public board needs to have a better mixed gender representation.

Yellowknife Catholic Schools board also saw 3,020 votes cast, which was a drop from 3,498 in 2012. Coming in first place was newcomer Tina Schauerte with 366 votes.

"I think as a member of the parent advisory committee at St. Joseph School and being a longtime Yellowknifer helped me," she said. "I am known in the community and a lot of people who were congratulating me feel I can provide good voice for parents."

Schauerte said she would be open to looking at improving voting numbers because the federal and municipal elections both had healthy turnouts. Along with Schauerte is newcomer Revi Lau-a who said he was very grateful for the support he received.

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