Never far from the classroom
New school board chairman has been a teacher, counsellor and administrator
Retired educator and NPA school trustee Fraser Ballantyne is the new chairman of the Vancouver school board. It’s a job that promises to be challenging because of possible school closures, tensions with the provincial government and a politically split board. Q You were a teacher before becoming a trustee. What did you teach?
A I taught elementary school and then I taught special education at high school for 10 years. After that, I took some counselling and administration courses and worked as an ESL counsellor. Then I went on to become an administrator at many different schools and later, I came to the board office and was a member of the senior management team, looking after human resources.
Q Tell me about your family.
A My son Colin is a planner with the Fraser Health Authority and my wife is a retired school teacher, who was a music specialist for 30 years. Colin went to Kitchener elementary and Prince of Wales mini school.
Q Why do you want this job?
A The Vancouver school board was really good to me going to school and then working there for 38 years. In my retirement, I wanted to do something for the community. The election rolled round after five or six months with my wife and travelling and I thought I could have some impact with all of the challenges the school board faces.
Q Speaking of challenges, earlier this month, the government released a report by Ernst & Young that urged closing 19 under-capacity schools to save $37 million a year. What do you think about this report?
A It’s a challenging report. Before I talk about it, I want to say that our staff have worked incredibly hard on a plan of their own. When the Ernst & Young report came out, we passed it back to our staff. The staff are now in the midst of submitting to the board their comments about the report for a meeting on Monday night. The Ernst & Young report is a very long and complex document.
Q Are you ready to close schools?
A School closures aren’t really on the books yet. We haven’t had any kind of conversation as a board about closures. The board has not approved any school closures and if school closures were to be discussed it would have to be carefully considered through our existing process.
Q One of the schools that has low enrolment is the Aboriginal Focus School at MacDonald elementary. Would you close that school?
A That hasn’t been discussed at any meeting I’ve been in. That’s something people are speculating about and there is a lot of misinformation out there right now. The Aboriginal Focus School is very important to the district.
Q The board is politically split with four Vision trustees, four NPA trustees and one Green trustee. How will you manage that? A There are three definite perspectives on the board and to bring that together is a challenge. That’s part of my job and I’m hopeful that people can land on a common-sense approach about where we should be going because we all care about kids. Q The former board chairman, Christopher Richardson is an auxiliary traffic police officer in his spare time. What do you do with your spare time?
A I’m trying to keep myself fit and I just got back from travelling to China. I play tennis, I ski and I try to keep active. At my age, you’ve got to look after yourself.