Fired principal elected to board

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This article was published 23/10/2014 (3719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thompson’s Mystery Lake school board will be an interesting place during the next four years as former high school principal Ryan Land has won a seat on the same board that fired him.

Equally interesting could be the Swan Valley School Division’s board, where a parent uprising turfed out five incumbent trustees amid charges the division consistently hires and promotes out-of-province teachers over local teachers.

Despite more than 61 per cent of rural school board seats being acclaimed or having no candidates running, there were significant races around Manitoba, races in which 18 incumbents lost their seats.

The old guard is gone in Thompson, where the Mystery Lake trustees had publicly rebuked and publicly fired Land as principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate in 2011. The province investigated after Mystery Lake went through three superintendents, eight assistant superintendents, three high school principals and nine high school vice-principals in four years.

A legal settlement rescinded Land’s firing and he dropped legal actions against Mystery Lake; he had already landed on his feet as a senior manager at mining giant Vale.

However, Caroline Winship was unsuccessful in her bid to become a Thompson trustee. The home-schooling parent grabbed headlines last spring when Mystery Lake refused to allow Winship to enrol her home-schooled son in a school band program, telling the family enrolment is an all-or-nothing deal.

Swan Valley fielded a remarkable 21 candidates for nine seats, surpassed only by the 29 candidates in the Winnipeg School Division.

Board chairman Keith Behrmann and incumbents Margaret Neely, Bryon Fried, Blaire Martin and Rudy Dauk all lost their seats.

There has been widespread dissent brewing in Swan River, Benito, Birch River, Bowsman and Monitas against the Swan Valley board and its superintendent, alleging out-of-province teachers got preference in hiring and promotion, and local teachers who spoke out were transferred.

In the province’s smallest division, McCreary-based Turtle River, veterans Fabian Gingras and Daniel Delaurier lost their seats. The province had investigated after parents complained that the board dropped popular junior-high shops programs.

There were fears in Steinbach opponents of Bill 18 would try to stack the Hanover school board, but no evidence emerged during the campaign. Steinbach has been the focal point of opposition to anti-homophobia and anti-bullying Bill 18, and especially to its provision any school receiving public funding must support any student who comes forward seeking to start a gay-straight alliance in his or her high school. Incumbents Andrew Wiebe and Bonnie Hildebrandt lost.

Other defeated incumbents include Beautiful Plains board chairwoman Bonnie Snezyk; Judith Cameron and Kris Gudmunson in Evergreen; Greg Shedden and Mark Grindey, Interlake; Marlene Craik in Pine Creek; Ron Rioux and Marie Gregory, Rolling River; and Sunrise’s Bill Zurba.

The province’s top vote-getter was David Johnson in Pembina Trails with 8,953 votes, who ran in a large three-seat ward. The Winnipeg School Division typically has the highest vote-getters, but switched from three three-seat wards of 43,000 voters, to nine single-seat wards of about 14,000 voters each.

Mark Wasyliw topped WSD trustees with 5,149 votes.

Meanwhile, women won five more seats than men in Wednesday’s provincewide school board elections.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca