Record number of school trustees win by acclamation

A historic number of school trustees have automatically won their bid to draft classroom budgets and make public education policy in Winnipeg.

Municipal and school board election day — Oct. 28 — is more than three weeks away, but 11 seats were filled before advance voting opened Monday.

There are seven uncontested races across the Winnipeg, River East Transcona, Pembina Trails, Louis Riel, St. James-Assiniboia and Seven Oaks school divisions.

That’s triple what was recorded in 2022. It’s five times the average number of default contests over the last six election cycles.

“Why would thoughtful, capable community members put their names forward for school board if doing so increasingly means being personally attacked by their neighbours or publicly vilified for asking difficult questions?” said Laura Reimer, a St. Boniface-based trustee in the early 2000s who has since authored two books on school board governance.

Reimer noted that boards have become the site of “intense debate” around parental expectations and inclusion policies, among other topics, in recent years.

As far as she is concerned, the state of acclamations reflects widespread confusion about the role of trustees and a broader loss of confidence in public institutions.

This year’s races have attracted about 10 per cent fewer nominees compared to when Reimer was on the campaign trail in 2002 — the same year Manitoba facilitated its latest round of school board amalgamations.

Winnipeg’s population has grown by about 180,000 people, or 30 per cent, during that period.

There are still 53 seats within city limits, but the Winnipeg School Division broke its three mega-wards into nine local ones in 2014.

Uncontested races outnumbered competitive ones in the division, the largest of its kind in the province, this fall.

Eligible voters in Winnipeg’s Grant Park, Earl Grey, West End, Sargent Park and Elmwood neighbourhoods won’t have the opportunity to cast a ballot for their pick for the 2026-30 term.

Neither will Pembina Trails residents in Charleswood, Linden Woods or surrounding communities, or St. James-Assiniboia taxpayers who live in Westwood and elsewhere near the Perimeter Highway.

“It’s a big job and we need to see it as a big job and those who are putting their names forward need to understand that,” said Lillian Klausen, president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society.

Klausen, who represents 17,000 public school teachers, said funding gaps and heightened public scrutiny of boards have had an impact.

She noted that her team has also been focusing advocacy efforts outside of Winnipeg to spotlight races in rural areas where teachers have flagged concerns about decisions being out-of-step with “the values of public education.”

Teachers were among the most outspoken critics of the Progressive Conservatives’ failed attempts in 2021 to replace 37 elected boards with a central education authority run by government appointees.

Since the NDP took power in 2023, school boards have been making headlines in connection to criticism about property education tax hikes and initiatives to combat homophobia and transphobia.

“Some parents are deeply concerned about what is happening in schools, while others are simply exhausted by the intensity of public debate,” said Reimer, who currently works in a governance and policy-development role at the University of Manitoba.

She said strong local governance systems require “genuine public engagement” spaces where people aren’t treated as enemies because they have differing views, as is often the case on social media platforms.

Some trustee hopefuls have been posting misinformation about Manitoba’s new sex-ed curriculum — a provincial document that trustees do not have any formal hand in designing — online ahead of election day.

Winnipeg has been home to six English-language boards since 2002. On average, between 2002 and 2022, there were 1.5 uncontested races every election cycle.

All of them were competitive in 2002, 2006 and 2014. That pattern was interrupted in 2010, the year six board members in two wards won their seats by simply submitting nomination papers.

The following election season, there were nine individual acclamations across five contests.

Four years ago, a pair of positions overseeing school communities in and around Sage Creek and a duo responsible for Radisson-area classrooms were acclaimed.

Kathy Heppner, Dante Aviso, Tamara Kuly, Cheryl Smukowich, Sandy Lethbridge, Fiona Shiells, Tim Johnson and Christine Jolly have each won their 2026 re-election campaigns by default.

Reid Pereira, Katrina Tessier and Lauralee Gooding are newly acclaimed rookie trustees.

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.