PRINCE ALBERT — Lori Kidney, the current vice chair of the North East School Division (NESD), was elected as vice-president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) during their 2024 Fall Assembly.
The assembly was held in Regina from Dec. 1-3. Shawn Davidson was acclaimed as president and Kidney was elected vice-president following a vote.
Davidson replaces Jaimie Smith-Windsor as SSBA president. Smith-Windsor, a longtime Saskatchewan Rivers School Division trustee, lost to Jill Brown in the Nov. 13 school board election.
Kidney said losing Smith-Windsor was tough for the SSBA.
"That was that was a tough one. She was a great asset for the SSBA,” Kidney said. “Shawn Davidson, who is the vice president at the time I believe, he was approached by a lot of the school divisions across the province to let his name stand for president.”
Kidney said she chose to run after being approached by other school divisions to let her name stand.
“It's a busy role, so you have to have the time to be able to do it, and I'm fortunate that I do,” she explained. “I was mostly approached by a lot of the other school divisions. I chatted with a few of the board chairs and some of the people on the SSBA executive about what the role encompassed and then I decided to let my name stand for nomination.”
Kidney said the SSBA is unique in Canada because it is one body representing all 27 school divisions whether they be public, Catholic or French. She added that the SSBA takes direction from their membership when it comes to goals.
"Our three goals are services, which were mostly insurance and legal services to the school boards. Then there's advocacy, and then there's board training and development—everything from helping with policies to being a good trustee and representing your people well. I think where we need to get to as a group is focusing a little bit on advocacy, speaking with one voice,” Kidney said.
"We do a relatively good job with the provincial government, but I think the last couple years have shown that we need to advocate for our classrooms. I think that's what the member boards want from us.”
Kidney, who represents Tisdale and Tisdale Rural would like to see specific strategies for both rural and urban education.
“Sometimes I feel the province is getting painted with the same brush and I don't know that that's always the right way to go,” Kidney said.
She said that one item that should be addressed in Preventative Maintenance and Renewal (PMR) funding.
"We have a lot of rural school divisions that they are just holding steady, but our buildings are getting older and we're probably never getting some new schools,” she explained. “In some of those areas, the school population is pretty small, so we need a strategy to make these buildings last and to look after them, and things like PMR funding have remained pretty flat.
“They are not even close to keeping up with inflation, so the real dollars to look after some of our buildings are going backwards. I think we need a real strategy for rural education (for) infrastructure. Busing is a huge challenge for all school divisions,” she added.
In the larger urban centres like Saskatoon and Regina school divisions are facing challenges from increased enrolment because of immigration.
“They are getting new schools. It’s just not getting built fast enough for them,” Kidnsey said. “We need to do some work, possibly with SaskBuilds, that when a school is announced (it’s) let's get going on it because right now there are schools in some of our urban centres that, by the time the doors open, are already over capacity.”
Kidney noted that the NESD has been fortunate with several new builds over the past 15 years including most recently Carrot River, along with Porcupine Plain and Hudson Bay.
"But we do need a plan and we need to start working on some varying strategies. We need to have more than one strategy in a big province like ours,” she said.
Kidney was first elected in 2016 as a trustee and has been re-elected in 2020 and 2024.
The NESD board of education saw some major changes as well with six of eight trustees being new. In Subdivision 3 (Nipawin Rural-White Fox) Jason Ens was acclaimed, in Subdivison 5 (Naicam-Star City) Ryan Pederson was acclaimed, in Subdivision 1 (Hudson Bay) Kathrene Bank was re-elected, in Subdivision 2 (Carrot River-Arborfield) Ken Teichrob was elected, in the City of Melfort and Melfort Rural (Subdivision 4) former City Councillor Tim Hoenmans was elected, Kidney was re-elected in Subdivision 6 (Tisdale-Tisdale Rural), Mark Van Haastert was elected in Subdivision 7 (Bjorkdale-Porcupine Plain) and longtime trustee Marla Walton was defeated by Logan Campbell in the Town of Nipawin.
At the board’s organizational meeting in November, Kidney, who was chair in the previous term, lost to Pederson after a tiebreaker when the vote was four to four. Kidney was then elected vice chair for the NESD board.
Kidney concluded that trustees are looking forward to some upcoming events before a break for the holidays.
“Arbitration is next for the teacher’s contract (on Dec. 16 to 20) so now we look forward to wrapping that up and then Christmas break and then onwards and upwards in the New Year,” she said.
