Now that trustees on the Flin Flon School Division (FFSD) board are settling into their new seats, committee assignments have been divvied out.
Board members will fill spots on seven advisory committees, down from nine used by the previous board.
Trustees Jill Akkerman, Murray Skeavington and Ebony Trubiak will serve on the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS) negotiation and advisory committee, while Skeavington will also be the FFSD representative on the workplace health and safety committee.
Leslie Fernandes, Amy Sapergia Green and Trubiak will represent the board in negotiations with the United Steel Workers (USW), while Tim Davis and Fernandes are the new board reps for accessibility. Leslie Power will represent FFSD on both the suspensions board and the skateboard joint committee, while Davis will sit on the City of Flin Flon traffic commission as the FFSD representative.
Two former seats with the bursary committee and technology committee have been scrapped. Fernandes said that the posts were outdated, adding that both committees submit reports to the board itself.
“There are a few committees that are there basically because they’ve been there forever,” she said.
“As we were looking through, they were really more operational than based on board governance. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to attend those meetings as we need, but at this point, it wasn’t really anything trustees needed to sit in on.”
Constance McLeese, FFSD’s superintendent, said members of both the bursary and technology committees regularly report to the board.
“The technology committee, in fact, is very in the weeds with what kind of switches they want to buy and what kind of megahertz they want to transmit things at,” McLeese said.
Budget change
Trustees chose to shift $20,000 from the school’s surplus to the FFSD’s information technology budget.
The board agreed to shifting the funds after starting the school year with little remaining cash in the school’s technology budget coffers.
“It’s an operating budget. The individual that’s now looking after our IT started the year with very little left. There were some fiscal switches and telephone issues,” explained FFSD secretary treasurer Heather Fleming.
Leadership academy
A new initiative is aiming to teach FFSD staff how to take charge.
McLeese discussed the beginning of what the division has named “leadership academies,” a monthly set of clinics designed to promote leadership skills for employees. Each session is done in-house and conducted by senior FFSD members, said McLeese.
“There’s one a month. There will be 10 by the time they work through it,” she said.
Each of the sessions will cover a different skill that can be applied in the classroom or elsewhere in school with positive goal outcomes.
“The purpose of the leadership academy is a really nuts-and-bolts lesson on how to really run a school, if you had to run a school. The theoretical part of leadership is something all of these candidates are getting from their master’s degree, but this helps cover the difference between theory and practice,” McLeese added.
MSBA election
Trustees also mentioned the upcoming Manitoba School Boards Association (MSBA) executive by-election.
Following last month’s school board elections, two seats on the provincial body’s executive council are now vacant. While one position, MSBA past-president, will remain vacant, two candidates have come forward for the opening of MSBA president – Interlake School Division trustee Alan Campbell and Kelli Riehl from the Swan Valley School Division.
Voting will take place on Nov. 30, during the MSBA general meeting in Winnipeg.
Trustee Skeavington was nominated by the FFSD board to represent the division at the meeting, but board members have not yet decided which of the two candidates they will support.
“The vote is the 30th and we do have another meeting before that. We will discuss as a board who we would like to vote for, then relay information to (Skeavington),” said Fernandes.
