French Catholic school board to fill vacant Welland seat
The French Catholic School Board is opening up applications for a seat left vacant represeting Welland the surrounding area.
Welland’s Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir trustee Jules Letourneau died at the end of June, shortly after his brother Welland councillor Rocky Letourneau.
In Welland and surrounding area, École élémentaire catholique Saint-Joseph, École élémentaire catholique du Sacré-Coeur, École élémentaire catholique Saint-François-d’Assise and École secondaire catholique Jean-Vanier are each under the MonAvenir school board.
“It’s a real loss in the community, the two Letourneau brothers,” said Mikale-Andrée Joly, director of corporate relations with MonAvenir.
She said Jules was highly respected and very devoted to his role as the area representative on the board. He was a regular at functions and often acted as a support for the chair of the board, Mélinda Chartrand, who also lives in Niagara. Whenever Chartrand would have to go to Ottawa or somewhere else for her role as chair, Jules would step in to help.
Joly said other responsibilities of board members in general are to fill the role of a school board trustee, acting as that link between the parents of children who attend one of the 59 schools in the board and the board itself.
To fill Jules’s role, the board will be accepting applications until August 31 since Joly said they need to fill the position by the end of September at the latest. Whoever fills the position will be in that seat until December of next year.
She said the board will be interviewing applicants and then picking based on those interviews; more information about how to apply will be available shortly. She said the person who fills the role will have to be someone from the community who is interested in advancing French Catholic education and is available on a regular basis to attend meetings, functions and whatever else is needed.
“It is very demanding in terms of your personal time,” she said.
She added that filling board member roles is particularly important since MonAvenir is continuously growing. In September alone, two more schools are set to open in Scarborough and Peterborough, and the board has three projects on the go for three additional schools in Hamilton, Milton and Missisauga.
The board was formed in 1998 and covers over 40,000 square kilometres in the province. Earlier this year saw its name changed from Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud and with it came a new website, cscmonavenir.ca.
It’s a real loss in the community, the two Letourneau brothers.” Mikale-Andrée Joly, director of corporate relations with MonAvenir