A Nanaimo trustee hopes to be re-elected to bring some continuity to what could be a different sort of term for the next school board.
Tania Brzovic announced this week that she will be seeking a second term on the Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools board of education.
She agreed that the landscape in the district has changed from what it was four years ago, with new possibilities for capital projects and education spending.
“We’ve been fiscally responsible and I’ve not always necessarily agreed with how we’ve gotten to some of those decisions, but I certainly like where we’re at with our budget,” she said.
Brzovic said the next school board will need to look at population growth areas, including along the Hammond Bay corridor and in Lantzville, and make “wise decisions” when it updates its facilities plan.
“It needs to be a really good process that’s really engaging of the community, one where people can feel good about the decisions we’ve made and feel that they’re really being heard and that the decisions are clear and make sense to people,” she said.
Brzovic, in a blog post, said she’s proud of the board’s work on social justice and embracing First Nations reconciliation. She told the News Bulletin she would like to see better supports for special-needs students and suggested that could involve both reallocating resources and advocacy work and communication with the Ministry of Education.
She said trustees need to understand but not try to manage day-to-day school district operations, and instead make a difference through developing policies. She’s had a lifelong interest in policy development and governance, she said, which helped her with her learning curve in her first term as trustee. Running for a second term demonstrates her commitment, she said.
“One of the things that I’ve found in our district that we’ve struggled with is a group comes in, makes a bunch of decisions, a new group comes in and throws those decisions out,” Brzovic said. “And that lack of consistency can be a problem.”
As one member of the school board, she said she’s supported the will of the board, but has been open to talking to people about the difficult choices the board has had to make.
“It is hard, certainly to learn to sort of toughen your skin and realize that you aren’t going to satisfy everybody with every decision you make,” she said. “You just have to try to make the best decision you can with the best information you can get.”
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