The Flin Flon School Division (FFSD) and other local groups will soon host a critically acclaimed artist.
The division plans to bring Winnipeg artist Jaime Black to Flin Flon for three days in February in partnership with the Flin Flon Aboriginal Friendship Centre and NorVA Centre.
Black is perhaps best known as the creator of the REDress Project, an installation art project based on the continuing issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Red dresses are put up in various areas around a community to serve as a visual metaphor for the missing and dead.
Black will be in Flin Flon Feb. 13 to 15, coinciding with the Women’s Resource Centre’s Women’s Memorial March. Black is slated to speak with students from Hapnot Collegiate, hang up red dresses with Many Faces Education Centre students and possibly hold art classes with students at the NorVA Centre. The school board itself is also scheduled to speak with Black during her visit as part of the board’s ongoing Circles of Reconciliation project.
“She’s going to be a very busy woman,” said Constance McLeese, FFSD superintendent.
“We’re quite excited about it.”
Provincial board
One trustee will try his luck in an upcoming election for a provincial school board position.
Longtime school board member Murray Skeavington will run for the Manitoba School Boards Association (MSBA) provincial board as the vice-president for boards under 6,000 students. He previously ran for the same position and lost.
A school trustee entering his 17th year on the board, Skeavington has previously served as a regional director with MSBA.
During the meeting, Skeavington requested support from the board for his bid. The board voted to support Skeavington, who abstained from the vote.
Social media
The school board plans on moving forward with social media.
During their Jan. 15 meeting, board chair Leslie Fernandes announced that the board will soon be launching its own Facebook and Twitter pages to better connect with the public.
Fernandes said the pages would be up and running within “the next few weeks” and hoped that the pages “will encourage parents and members of the public to understand and know who we are and why these posts matter.”
Budget
The school division’s recent online budget consultation has been completed and trustees are already considering it a success.
During preparations for this year’s pending school division budget, the board chose to post an online questionnaire for parents and members of the public, asking them what their priorities would be for the upcoming school year. It was the first time the board had ever held an online budget poll.
McLeese was pleased with the response, saying, “it certainly picked up after Christmas.”
The questionnaire was closed on Jan. 18.
Bylaws
School board trustees gave first reading to three new bylaws, the first such measures introduced in the new calendar year.
Bylaws 1-2019, 2-2019 and 3-2019 were read for the first time, firming up the responsibilities of trustees and confirming the amounts of remuneration, travel and business expenses for trustees.
Board members said the new bylaws mean no big changes, but formalize rules that had already been on the books for the board and division informally and shift rules from the division to the board itself.
“It’s aligned with what other divisions are doing, and it’s pretty much aligned to what we’ve always done. It’s just that we’ve formalized the process,” said Amy Sapergia Green, school board trustee.
“School boards are governed by bylaws. School divisions are governed by policies. It’s their internal governments, as trustees, that our bylaws address,” said McLeese.
