Three candidates have put their names on the ballot in the race to choose a new West Vancouver Schools trustee.
Voters in West Vancouver, Lions Bay and Bowen Island will go to the polls in an April 5 byelection to replace former trustee Lynne Block, now West Vancouver-Capilano’s B.C. Conservative MLA.
Those who filed their nomination papers by the 4 p.m. deadline on Friday are Sheelah Donahue, Roman Nurpeissov, and Neil Jensen.
Donahue is seeking a return to the West Vancouver school board where she served from 2014 to 2022, when she fell 139 votes shy of re-election.
“I thought it was really important that somebody with a strong grounding in what the role is all about and an understanding of the education landscape runs for the position,” she said, adding that public education has long been a passion of hers. “It’s a foundation for basically any community that we have. We need to have strong public schools and we need to have people who really care about public education.”
Because of her experience on the board, Donahue said she knows better than to promise new initiatives or take provocative stances on issues that are outside a school district’s mandate or abilities.
“We need to elect trustees who understand where there are levers of influence, and where we’re not going to have any influence, and not let the areas where we have no influence be a distraction,” she said, citing the province’s capital funding plans and curriculum mandates as key examples of where local trustees have little say.
“Trustees really should put their students and families before any allegiance to special interest groups or political parties, especially when it’s really tempting to get drawn into arguments around identity politics,” she said.
Nurpeissov, a practising lawyer with two kids in West Vancouver’s public schools, said he was inspired to run based on his time volunteering with Irwin Park Elementary’s parent advisory council.
“At that time, I became a believer that a stronger parental voice from somebody who has actually a vested interest … is needed on the board,” he said.
Nurpeissov said he would be a strong advocate for expanding the district’s offerings of programs bolstering “academic excellence,” including hiring new talented teachers and expanding academies.
He also would call for renovation and expansion of the district’s physical facilities.
“Which I understand is always tied to the budgetary constraints, but I’m willing to work with the ministry, with the board, to get the funding that we need in this district,” he said. “As I understand, we’ve always been a donor district, but … not all of those funds go back to the district, and that is where I want to make my impact so that the funds stay here, or at least a bigger portion.”
Beyond that, Nurpeissov said he would be a strong advocate for anti-bullying measures in schools.
Jensen, who has a background in construction and sales and has two kids in the public system, said he is running largely because he believes West Vancouver’s schools are in need of capital improvements.
“I often wonder if Westcot’s got the same coat of paint on it that it had when I went there, and I’m curious as to where a lot of the money is going for maintenance improvements,” he said.
If elected, Jensen said he will be searching for ways to facilitate donations to local schools in exchange for tax deductible receipts.
“We’ve got a lot of fairly wealthy people in the community, and they’re already paying an egregious amount in quote-unquote School Tax to the province, but I don’t think a lot of that money is coming back to the district,” he said.
Jensen said parents are also not satisfied with the current grading system used in report cards and that more transparency is needed.
“I think there’s a lot of frustrations over the feedback that you know parents are getting from the schools on exactly where their kids stand in relation to their peers.”
And, he added, three days of physical education per week currently offered isn’t enough for high-energy kids, so he will be supporting more P.E. and outdoor education during school hours, and more after-school programs.
The byelection is scheduled for Saturday, April 5 with polls open at the West Vancouver Community Centre’s Lily Lee Room and Bowen Island Community School from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
There will be two days of advance voting opportunities – Wednesday, March 26 and Monday March 31, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at West Vancouver municipal hall.
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