Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2015 (2995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rookie trustee Dean Koshelanyk is causing big problems for the Winnipeg School Division.

You people in his ward, you people who elected him and let him loose to create havoc — was he open and transparent about his penchant for doing his homework, did he disclose fully and honestly during the campaign that he reads documents and reports, was he up front with you about his diligence?

Or did he try to hide it, until he was safely in office, and then — boom! — out he comes with all kinds of stuff, ambushing everyone with information that no one ever saw coming.

The division is going to need a bigger fan by the time Koshelanyk gets through throwing facts and hitting the totally-inadequate fan they’ve got.

Case in point, the latest religious turmoil within the division over the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s annual petitions to conduct religious exercises and/or Bible studies in a handful of schools in which parents of at least 25 children have signed petitions allowing their children to participate.

This has been going on for years, and the parents have the right to do so under the Public Schools Act. Trustees have always given the CEF a hard time, holding one of the three readings of the enabling bylaw each month, after staff have counted the names and verified they all have kids at the particular school.

But Koshelanyk is the first one to venture into the land of the bureaucrats, and ask to see the petition, in this case for Greenway School.

And when Koshelanyk beheld the petition, he was aghast at its form and detail and specifics, or more accurately, the considerable lack of such. He alerted the board, the majority of whom rejected the application on the basis of unacceptable documentation, and who have now tasked a board committee with working with the CEF to develop a petition template that meets the newly-awakened trustees’ standards.

It was also Koshelanyk who asked me where on earth I ever got the idea the WSD feels entitled to a new school in the Waterford Green subdivision without even putting it on the five-year capital priority list submitted each year for provincial consideration.

I told him that finance chair Sherri Rollins told me it wasn’t on the list, in response to my questioning her about it.

You can guess the next line, eh? Koshelanyk told me that it’s not only on the five-year capital priorities list, but it’s been the division’s self-identified number one priority since 2013, and he sent me the proof which he’d found in public documents.

You people thought life was interesting with Mike Babinsky? Prepare to tremble every time Dean Koshelanyk rises to speak.