New trustee brings youth to Seven Oaks board

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2022 (1366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CODY SELLAR

STAFF REPORTER

NORTHWEST WINNIPEG

Newly elected school trustee Evan Krosney is stepping into a world occupied by few people his age.

The 25-year-old received more votes than any other candidate running in the Seven Oaks School Division in the Oct. 26 municipal election.

“My birthday was Oct. 15, so being elected was a nice birthday surprise,” Krosney joked.

As the youngest addition to the division’s board of school trustees —to which Krosney and West St. Paul’s Tiffany Winchar will be the only new faces — Krosney said he’s excited to bring something new to the table and to learn the ropes from the re-elected incumbents.

“It’s going to be a good mix of new ideas and new energy, but also experience and proven track records of getting things done,” Krosney, who was encouraged to run by returning Seven Oaks trustee Greg McFarlane, said.

Krosney attributed his success to knocking on doors around the community and having “thousands of conversations with parents, with educators and with students.”

He said a recurring theme of those interactions was worries that provincial cuts were negatively affecting students and that class sizes were too large.

“Because of that, I want to be a voice on the board actively and openly advocating for more funding, so that we can get back to a place where our class sizes are 20 kids or less,” he said.

To accommodate the increased demand for physical space that would create, Krosney said he intends to push for more permanent expansions to schools in the area, as he said schools across Winnipeg currently rely too heavily on portable classrooms.

Krosney said being involved in last year’s campaign against the provincial government’s proposed Bill 64, which called for the elimination of school trustees altogether, was the catalyst for his decision to run in this year’s municipal election.

“(Bill 64) essentially threatened to take away all representation from our schools, and would have threatened more cuts and consolidations to our education system. At a time when teachers were already dealing with giant class sizes and fewer resources, that was a dangerous bill that would have just made things even worse,” Krosney said.

Krosney said the silver lining in that proposed bill — besides, from his perspective, the province abandoning it shortly after the departure of former premier Brian Pallister — was that “more folks than ever before were paying attention” to the work of school trustees.

Earlier this year, Krosney also helped spearhead a successful push to prevent the moving of West Kildonan Library to Garden City Shopping Centre. The new trustee credited his new peers with the campaign’s success.

“I can confidently say that had it not been for the support of the trustees and the support of the division, we likely would not have been successful in keeping our library. It was really the students and the educators in the community who spoke so strongly against the closure,” he said.

The inaugural meeting of the new Seven Oaks School Division board of trustees was Nov. 7.