Manitoba school division rocked by controversy, sets elections date

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A rural Manitoba school division has set a date for a by-election to replace multiple trustees who walked off the job in the last school year, because of what some said was a toxic environment.

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Students across the province returned to classrooms last week, but in the Dauphin-based Mountain View School Division (MVSD) the new school year kicked off with a total of four empty seats on the division’s board of trustees, and only five trustees sitting on what is a nine-person board.

Last week, MVSD set a by-election to fill those four seats for Oct. 30.

One of those seats became vacant last March when trustee Charlene Gulak stepped away to pursue a professional opportunity, but the other three seats were left empty last June under more controversial circumstances.

On June 4, MVSD trustees Leifa Misko, Floyd Martens and Scott McCallum all announced they had tendered their resignations from the board effective immediately, with Misko saying at the time the environment at the board table had gotten so bad, that she did not feel she could continue to do her job effectively.

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“Not all voices are respected or welcomed. It has reached the point where it is no longer effective to remain sitting as a MVSD School Board Trustee. I truly wish this was not the case,” Misko said in a statement she released after announcing her resignation.

Those resignations were just some of the slew of controversies the division faced last school year, and that led to the province stepping in and initiating a provincial governance review.

The controversies began during an April board meeting when trustee Paul Coffey made a presentation to the board where he made several claims including that residential schools were “good.”

In his presentation he also defended the use of the word “Indian” when referring to Indigenous peoples, and used the term multiple times while speaking, and questioned the need for Indigenous land acknowledgements in schools and events, calling them “divisive.”

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The presentation led to outrage among some, including the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, who called it “profoundly racist.”

Education Minister Nello Altomare also expressed concern about the presentation and announced in April the province would conduct a provincial governance review of MVSD, and appoint an oversight committee to oversee the board, and monitor trustee conduct at their meetings.

Also, on June 3, just one day before the three board members resigned, the board announced that Superintendent Stephen Jaddock had been removed from his role as superintendent after four other trustees on the board including Coffey voted to oust him.

An email from a provincial spokesperson for the education minister said, “The review is ongoing and there are no further updates at this time.”

MVSD has released a notice of nominations for the Oct. 30 by-election, and nomination packages for prospective nominees are now available at the board office.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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