No candidates come forward for trustee in Fort Chipewyan
Northland school division’s first elected school board in seven years was missing a key ingredient — candidates.
When the call for nominations closed Monday, nobody had put their names forward in three of the division’s 11 new wards.
The dearth of candidates in some communities prompted the division, where students are mostly Indigenous, to issue a second call for nominations on Tuesday, which yielded an acclaimed candidate in two wards.
As of Tuesday, Fort Chipewyan still had no candidate running in the Oct. 16 municipal election to represent the community.
“It’s a huge change having a ward structure versus the local school board committee structure,” Northland’s official trustee, Lois Byers, said Tuesday. “So, it’s just been a lot of learning for people. There are still lots of questions about how it will work.”
The northern Alberta school division, which runs 23 schools with 2,700 students in an area about the size of Italy, has been without an elected board since 2010, when chronic attendance problems and low test scores prompted the province to dismiss the board and appoint an official trustee.
Intending to return Northland to a democratic model, the government this spring passed the Northland School Division Act.
The law dismantled the existing governance structure, which saw local community members paid to serve on each school’s board. The chairs of those 23 boards constituted the Northland school board.
After consulting with communities, Byers recommended carving Northland into 11 wards. The division widely advertised the new trustee roles through schools, on social media and by publishing a handbook, she said.
She’s hoping to be out of a job
Oct. 26 when the new board is sworn in.
On Monday, 18 people signed up to be candidates in eight of those new wards. Byers said she was pleased to see up to three contenders vying for seats in three wards.
No one entered the race Monday in Susa Creek, near Grande Cache, nor did they in the Desmarais Sandy Lake ward, nor in the fly-in community of Fort Chipewyan.
Northland then re-opened nominations Tuesday morning, prompting Cathy Wanyandie to put her name forward in Susa Creek and Silas Yellowknee to run in Desmarais Sandy Lake. Both were acclaimed Tuesday.
The Fort Chipewyan seat remains vacant. Nominations will re-open there each day for a total of six days until a candidate comes forward, Byers said. If no one does, Northland can apply to the education minister to extend nominations for up to six more days. If, still, no one has come forward, the division will call a byelection in that ward.
The commitment of regular travel between Fort Chipewyan and Peace River may be an obstacle, Byers said. Potential candidates may also need more information about the changes, she said.