Louis Riel School Division Board of Trustees

09/15/2023

We are grateful to the Garden Valley School Division Board of Trustees for sharing this timely and relevant perspective as we go into the election season. Let's continue to nurture and grow together!

09/10/2023

HIGH STAKES FOR EDUCATION
Winnipeg Free Press
Aug 19, 2023

THERE is much at stake for Manitoba’s public education system that should compel consideration by voters in the lead-up to the Oct. 3 provincial election. School boards know that regardless of which party forms government, both long-standing and emerging issues must be properly and fully addressed to ensure success for all current and future students.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, with the virus still present and being transmitted. School boards and senior administrative teams will be navigating the effects of a global pandemic for some time. Indeed, stress and anxiety due to a variety of factors, including those brought on by COVID, is having an unprecedented impact on the mental health and wellness of students and staff.
The climate catastrophe is getting worse. Oppressive heat arrives earlier each year and stays for much longer. Under such conditions, schools and buildings without adequate cooling systems are not conducive to learning or working. How we build schools and keep older buildings comfortable must be looked at through a lens of immediacy, but also one of sustainability and renewability.
Infrastructure deficits are increasing. For decades, school divisions have had to delay needed repairs and upgrades due to budget constraints. The cost to address all of these, across all school divisions in Manitoba, is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, increasing exponentially the longer it takes to resolve.
More children across the province are coming to school hungry. When the link between poverty and educational success is so well documented, how and when does the province with the highest child poverty levels in Canada acknowledge this wrong and take steps to make it right?
Knowing that a safe and caring learning environment is crucial for student success, how do we provide this, supported by a framework of equity, respect for diversity, and inclusion?
The literal $64-million question, and the dark cloud overhead, centres on funding. How do school boards save for a rainy day when it is always pouring, and the umbrella is filled with holes?
Where does the money come from, for desperately needed clinical services staff, nutrition programs, and infrastructure repairs when school boards are capped at grants below the rate of inflation while at the same time having lost the ability to raise revenue locally to cover some of the shortfall?
It all hinges on a long-awaited and much-needed new funding model, which may in fact do little over time to assist school boards if the amount of money allocated is inadequate, its distribution unequitable, the model itself unsustainable, and the dollar amount year-over-year unpredictable for planning purposes.
It was not long ago that the potential adoption of Bill 64 shone a light on the numerous and connected facets of the public education system. The ensuing conversations only served to further highlight challenges being faced provincially and locally which, coupled with a global pandemic, decades of underfunding, staggering poverty, and mounting mental health challenges have combined to bring the perfect storm to Manitoba’s public education system.
We must look for the opportunities that lie in the eye of this storm.
As the voting public we can, and should, insist on sustainable practices, safe and healthy schools and buildings, and environments that inspire generosity of thought and action, where all who work and learn have what they need to succeed.
This must be realized under a new and fully functioning umbrella, in a public education system that is adequately funded and resourced to do all of this and more, for the sake of our province and future generations. The myriad needs and challenges school boards and senior teams are working to address, both emerging and ongoing, deserves serious contemplation as voters consider how they will mark their ballot.
At the same time, we must acknowledge and celebrate the many successes found in every school thanks to the innovative approaches, expertise, and dedication of caring and committed senior and school educational leaders and staff.
When a candidate for MLA knocks on your door, and as Manitobans prepare to go to the polls, think about your kids or grandkids, the kids in your community, the opportunities you want for them, and the future of Manitoba.
Think about public education.
Sandy Nemeth is president of the Manitoba School Boards Association.

06/02/2023

Members of the school board and senior leadership team will join the LRSD community in the Pride Parade on Sunday June 4. If you are there, give us a wave!! And if you want to walk with us, here is what you need to know:

LRSD Celebrates Pride Week/Month 2023

05/12/2023

The Louis Riel School Division Board of Trustees believes school libraries should offer learning resources and reading material that motivates students to think critically, reflect on their personal beliefs, and to understand their responsibilities and rights as citizens. This includes books that allow all students and members of our divisional family to see themselves as valued and respected members of society, including the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

04/22/2023

School absenteeism problem not so simple.

Betty Edel- Chair, Winnipeg School Division Board of Trustees
Winnipeg Free Press; April 22, 2023

The Manitoba government has released its latest action plan for students called Safe and Caring Schools: A Policy Directive and Action Plan to Enhance Student Presence and Engagement. In summary, the plan acknowledges the many issues that contribute to attendance issues for students. Things like poor health or poor mental health, work responsibilities, homelessness and the accompanying issues it brings.

These are real issues for students across the province, the kind of issues that require real life supports — basic needs like food, housing, medical assistance. Many students who are struggling to attend school want to be there, but they’ve worked a full nightshift to help support their family. Or they haven’t had a proper meal in several days and now feel ill. Or they have made it to school the entire week and by Friday have run out of money for bus fare.

It’s unlikely that these students, who want to go to school but who are facing these real-life challenges, are watching TV commercials and saying to themselves, “Gee, if I just plan what I want to wear tomorrow and pre-make my lunch, then I’ll get to school, no problem.”

Of course not. Our students who are facing chronic absenteeism need us, including our government, to step up and start meeting their needs so that they can attend school regularly and have a chance at a life out of poverty. When we commit to providing necessary nutrition to sustain our children, affordable housing so our families can thrive and easily accessible medical and mental health services, that’s when we will have success in student attendance.

Instead of an advertising campaign that won’t be seen by most of the target audience, maybe we should focus our dollars on giving educators the tools to “locally develop strategies that are responsive to the community, school and classroom needs”.

It really isn’t as simple as saying “School — keep going.”

Betty Edel
Chair, Winnipeg School Division Board of Trustees

04/15/2023

Ward 4 Trustee Chipalo Simunyola in the April 12 edition of the Community Review East.

“Manitoba winters are long; Manitoba winters are cold; Manitoba winters are terrible,” are some of the most-used phrases describing winter in our province.

04/15/2023

OPINION: 'Astronomical' funding won't meet basic needs.
April 12, 2023
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2023/04/12/astronomical-funding-wont-meet-basic-needs
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ON a regular basis, school board chairs and the senior leadership of metro Winnipeg school divisions meet to discuss the most urgent issues facing public education across our city. On the heels of the funding of schools announcement for the 2023-2024 school year, the focus of a recent meeting centred on the challenges facing school boards as they work to draft budgets that meet the needs of their school divisions.

With all in agreement that current inflationary pressures had not been considered, and after years of chronic under-funding, consensus around the table was that we are in a precarious and unsustainable position in trying to meet all of the needs within our respective school divisions with funding that doesn’t allow us to do so.

Education Minister Wayne Ewasko labelled the 2023-24 funding commitment as “astronomical.” This is not only misleading, it suggests an ability of school divisions across the province to now look after the needs of all learners fully and completely.

The realities suggest otherwise. School boards continue to address pandemic-related pressures, among others, with funding that has not kept up to inflation.

While the minister, in media reports, touted a 6.1 per cent increase, not a single school division in Winnipeg received an increase above 5.2 per cent. The picture for smaller rural and northern school boards is even more bleak. The only sense in which “astronomical” applies is the monumental and negative impacts that many school divisions must navigate as they weather the budget storm.

As an example, since September 2022, River East-Transcona School Division (RETSD) has welcomed close to 800 new students and in Louis Riel School Division (LRSD), that number is well over 500. A significant number of these learners require clinical supports that are not readily available, owing to staff shortages that lead to unprecedented wait times for much needed expertise and services.

Increasing immigration and the building of new communities means these needs are here for the foreseeable future. How do we meet the needs of these students when the gap between what school boards need and what we have to meet those needs is a collective $500 million?

Consider, also, that with each school board in Manitoba having accurate and current documentation of the infrastructure deficits in their divisions, a provincial audit of our aging buildings would reveal a repair price tag in the hundreds of millions. The cost for much-needed, and promised, new schools is also in the hundreds of millions.

We are all wondering the same thing: when will funding reflect what is needed in the K-12 system, and where exactly is this money going to come from?

Meanwhile, school divisions are looking for ways to make the funding work: adjusting bell times to stretch the shrinking capacity of bus fleets; continuing to provide food and nutrition programs in support of students experiencing poverty; replacing boilers and plugging roof leaks in response to the ongoing need for repairs.

When increased enrolment is immediately supported, pandemic learning recovery and clinical needs adequately resourced, all infrastructure needs looked after and overall funding becomes both adequate and sustainable, our meetings will have more of a celebratory focus.

However, we did end our meeting on a positive note, by sharing examples of what we celebrate in our respective divisions, thanks to the dedication, creativity, expertise, kindness and commitment of teachers, staff and administrators. From the ongoing advancement of reconciliation to the difference every day makes for the refugee and newcomer students who arrive with their families, we reminded ourselves that funding makes all of it possible.

Without more of the same, however, the celebrations may be short-lived.

Sandy Nemeth is chair of the board of trustees for Louis Riel School Division.

ON a regular basis, school board chairs and the senior leadership of metro Winnipeg school divisions meet to discuss the most urgent issues facing public education across our city. On the heels of the funding of schools announcement for the 2023-2024 school year, the focus of a recent meeting centre...

04/11/2023

Did you know that Louis Riel School Divsion has an endowment fund in partnership with The Winnipeg Foundation? You can learn more here: https://www.lrsd.net/page/1492/riel-evate-committee
And we are celebrating the generosity of teachers and staff with a special spotlight story: https://www.lrsd.net/_ci/post/00200616-0003-0000-0000-000000021299

04/07/2023

Highlights of the April 4 regular meeting of the board: https://www.lrsd.net/_ci/post/00200616-0003-0000-0000-000000021232

04/05/2023

"Next year’s funding increase will not be enough to stop that bleeding. The Louis Riel School Division has had to use $2.4 million in emergency funds, normally reserved for one-time expenses, to balance its books."

The Stefanson government’s public schools funding announcement earlier this year was not quite as “astronomical” as originally advertised.