School boards adapt to tariffs by halting travel, preparing for cost hikes

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This article was published 04/03/2025 (190 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Transcona’s school board has decided to stop paying for teachers and other employees to participate in U.S.-based education conferences and training opportunities.

The River East Transcona School Division, which operates 42 schools in northeast Winnipeg, is the latest to promote domestic tourism — in the form of student field trips and staff professional development — amid the Canada-United States trade war.

Colleen Carswell, chair of the board of trustees, said she and her colleagues want to be fiscally responsible and that means doubling down on spending resident tax dollars locally.

“There’s a bigger picture in regards to the tariffs,” Carswell said. “We just want to make sure that we’re part of a solution.”

Senior administrators are not cancelling a single, pre-booked student trip to Minneapolis in June, but communications manager Adrian Alleyne indicated they will not approve future travel to any state.

Alleyne noted that federal and provincial governments have urged citizens to spend their dollars in Canada in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s nationalist rhetoric.

The White House introduced 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods Tuesday, as well as 10 per cent duties on local energy exports. Ottawa has retaliated with new taxes on $30 billion worth of American products.

School boards are bracing for costlier vendor invoices and considering their general ties to Manitoba’s largest trading partner.

Winnipeg, Seven Oaks and Pembina Trails offices are pausing student trips to the U.S., but haven’t gone so far as to discourage professional development opportunities abroad. The St. James-Assiniboia School Division has made Canada its “destination-of-choice for future field trip proposals.”

“Sometimes, the calibre of play that some teams want and professional learning that is of most benefit to staff and administrators will be south of the border and that’s just a reality,” said Sandy Nemeth, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association.

Nemeth confirmed two representatives from the non-partisan association will travel to Atlanta in April for the U.S. National School Boards Association spring conference.

The annual event is an opportunity for attendees to reflect on trends and challenges in the education sector, she said. “We’re learning from them and vice versa,” she said.

Nemeth, a veteran trustee in St. Vital, noted that many employers work with their respective teachers union local to administer funds for out-of-province conferences and educational training.

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society has not weighed in on the subject. Union president Nathan Martindale was not available for an interview Tuesday.

The Louis Riel School Division spent around $114,000 on 61 out-of-province professional development experiences during the 2023-24 school year.

Among those excursions, which the Free Press obtained via freedom of information request, employees travelled to Chicago for the Innovative Schools Summit, Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest education conference and Palm Springs, Calif., for a Computer Using Educators conference.

LRSD administration indicated in a statement that it continues to support “U.S.-based (professional development) opportunities that align with our values, as they can be valuable for our staff’s growth.”

Employee salaries and benefits make up the overwhelming majority of school board budgets. They are projected to spend a combined $176 million on supplies and services this year.

Paul Ilchena, executive director of the Manitoba Association of School Business Officials, said members will be scrambling to work with their suppliers and mitigate the fallout of tariffs.

The Winnipeg School Division, the largest in the province with upwards of 30,000 students, has approximately 1,200 U.S. vendors.

The majority are linked to the buildings and technology departments that support 78 schools in central Winnipeg.

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Florida-based Mandarin Library Automation and New York City’s Broadway Licensing are among the 28 U.S. contractors that have been identified by the Seven Oaks board office.

The north Winnipeg division uses the former’s library management software and pays for the latter’s scripts for theatrical productions. Its total spending on U.S. products and services was about $212,000 last year, or 0.1 per cent of its budget.

“We are pretty much as streamlined as possible already,” superintendent Tony Kreml said, adding the division only purchases specialty U.S. products that are not made locally and many of them are technology-related.

Given tech is required in each of its 26 schools, the prospect of surging licencing and hardware costs is a cause for concern now that tariffs are in effect, he said.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Maggie Macintosh
Education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie.

Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.