CHMA is featuring Meet Your Candidates interviews with local candidates for May 10 elections. You can find them all here.
One of the many contests on the ballot for May 10 is that for seats on the province’s District Education Councils (DECs). People in the Tantramar region can choose to vote in either the Anglophone East or Francophone Sud school districts.
Brian Neilson is running for a seat on the Anglophone East district education council. Here’s Brian in conversation with CHMA’s Erica Butler:
You can find out more information about Brian Neilson’s campaign on his Facebook page.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Brian Neilson, thanks for joining us.
BRIAN NEILSON: Thank you for having me, Erica.
CHMA: So for those who might not already know you tell us a bit about yourself.
BN: Well, my name is Brian Neilson. I first came to Sackville in 1995 as a student from Banff, Alberta. I got a BA here, finished up in ’99, went to Montreal, and met the woman who would become my wife. She got a job teaching at Mount Allison, so we returned to Sackville in 2002. So it’s been about 20 years now since I’ve lived here this second go-round.
We have two children, Emma and John. Emma’s in Tantramar Regional High School, John’s at Marshview Middle School.
I’ve been, for about the last decade, or since the kids have been school age, involved in various committees at the schools from PSSCs to Home and Schools to most recently working on the Sackville Schools 2020 initiative.
I’m a cook for a living or by trade. So I’ve got a soft spot for working with your hands. And I’ve got a soft spot for book learning. And that’s mean a nutshell.
CHMA: Alright. So what factored into your decision to run for Anglophone East district Education Council?
BN: Oh, quite simply, I love the kids. You know, I love seeing smiles on children’s faces. I believe in the power and the possibility and the promise of public education. I think the 21st century learning goals that are fundamental to our children’s successes—some call them the seven C’s, they are even the values of Marshview Middle School—are phenomenal, and they need to be instituted across the board. [Editor’s note: The seven C’s typically refer to: critical thinking; creativity and innovation; collaboration; cross-cultural understanding; communication; computing technology; and career learning.]
I love community engagement in our schools. I think between Sackville and Port Elgin and Dorchester, there’s no denying that schools play a huge role in the communities where they are. And I want to help keep those schools in those communities. Right now, the five of our local public schools are called the Tantramar family of schools. Well, you know, I want to help take care of the family. So that’s why I’m running.
CHMA: Do you have issues that you’re hoping to highlight in your campaign?
BN: I’m hoping to highlight everything from the big picture things to the little, minute day-to-day classroom stuff. I mean, big picture, we’re living in a world right now, that in its response to the COVID-19 global pandemic is learning about distance working, distance learning. Well, that’s going to have an impact on where people choose to live and raise their families. When specific office spaces or work locations are no longer an issue and people are free to, on occasion, move about the country, then I think we have a mandate or an impetus here in Sackville—and Dorchester and Port Elgin and the surrounding communities—to make the schools attractive for new people coming to our little part of southeastern New Brunswick, whether as COVID refugees or otherwise. So it’s a vision of that… what’s our long term economic benefit and boon to the community of having people from elsewhere move to this community. That’s one of the issues.
Other immediate issues for the classroom involve working in a DEC councillor role to help provide teacher support, to push a superintendent to increase the amount of leave time teachers get to learn the skills they need to teach in a manner that they weren’t necessarily trained to teach when they were going and finishing their B.Ed. programs.
Another issue for me is increasing the opportunities of an Engage program that’s presently offered at Marshview Middle School, so that kids in Port Elgin, kids in Dorchester can experience the really great possibilities of engaged learning, of inquiry driven learning, of problem solving based learning—learning with their hands, learning from people in their communities.
I was a cook-tutor-mentor in the Engage program in it’s first go-round. And while I don’t know if my daughter might readily admit it, but I think she was kind of proud to see her dad at school, doing what he did for a living, passing on that knowledge and that understanding.
That program, you know, in collaboration with Mount Allison University, just works so well for giving exposure to children who might not think of the trades, or think of birdwatching, or think of all the various community-based projects that get brought to the school that are beyond the regular curriculum, that free up some time for the teachers, but also allow the children—whose parents, as community members, show up in the classroom—have pride in what their parents do. I mean, this program is so wonderful. There was someone who taught bird watching once as an Engage program where they’d spend three hours a week for a semester bird watching. Well, lo and behold, three years later, one of the kids in that Engage program is now going to represent Anglophone East nationally in a grade eight science contest.
These issues of catching children’s passion, and fanning those flames, and how can we do that in a policy manner that makes it the rule and not the exception? Those sorts of things that empower teachers, put the hands of learning in the learners and those people first and foremost, those are the kind of the issues I’m obviously passionate about.
CHMA: Now, when you look at the school system in Sackville, in the surrounding district,as you mentioned, in the Tantramar family of schools that you’d be representing. What do you like that you see? And what do you think needs improvement?
BN: I spent a morning yesterday at Port Elgin school, and I’m hoping to visit Dorchester Consolidated before the campaign’s over to get a better first hand vision of what they’re about. All my kids have gone through the Tantramar schools, so I feel good about that. But I think, I’m part of running for the District Education Council for the sake of those schools, right?
The thing is, if you look, you go online and look at the list of candidates, there’s nine sub-districts for Anglophone East. Two thirds of them are being acclaimed. There’s only two incumbents, one is vacant, and our sub-district and sub-district one are the only two positions that are being contested. So altogether, you have 10 candidates for nine positions. I think that’s atrocious, that there’s not that much more interest by the public in public education. You know, the public is greatly interested when there’s talk about school closures, when there’s talk about school openings. And beyond that, there’s not a whole bunch of day to day interest, right?
But when I’m talking to kids in Port Elgin yesterday, and they’re telling me all the things they want to see happen in their school, and one of the fellows says to me, you know, if you win, I’m going to hold you to it. And this is talking about making sure there was more opportunity for decisions that affect Port Elgin, to make sure that Port Elgin is represented there. And that’s across the Tantramar board, right? That’s Dorchester, that’s Salem, that’s Marshview, that’s TRHS.
So I think what I would love to see improved is the exposure of the decisions that the DEC makes, right? So for instance, a couple years ago there was a policy 409 review of the facilities, in particular Marshview, because Marshview is an old institution and you know, it’s not doing well. Our children aren’t getting any younger, the buildings are only getting older. But I don’t know how many people know that after the decision was made to have a midlife upgrade or a rationalization for these facilities, the three Sackville schools, that right now on the capital projects list, the Tantramar Regional High School midlife upgrade is 29th on the list. And the proposed unification of Marshview and Salem as a rationalization is 41st on the list.
So we went through a specific process to determine the futures of this while other community groups were offering other possible solutions to the facility challenge in our region. And even after the decision was made to not go that way, but to go with this route of keeping facilities separate, they’re still 29th and 41st on a list of capital projects, and as I understand that, the district has also moved the goalposts so that midlife is now no longer 50 years, but a 75 year window. So this has just made our buildings even older. And like I say, our kids aren’t getting any younger.
So it’s getting that kind of information out to a community and getting a community to respond, that I think could be an improvement of the DEC. Because that benefit of the DEC is that the public has a space to go through their representative, to participate in the decision making process for their education system, for their school system.
So and especially if you listen to the recent words of the education minister, Dominic Cardi, and his belief in local governance, now is all the more reason for us to have an opportunity to have people at the table who’ve demonstrated commitment to education in this place, who’ve demonstrated imagination to what education could be for our kids and for our families and for our future. And quite frankly, you know, I think I’m that guy. That’s what I see need improving. And there you have it.
CHMA: Now, let me just ask you to expand on one thing there. Will you, as a DEC council member, will you be talking about changing or reviewing that decision about what’s happening with Marshview and Salem and Tantramar? Or are you talking about moving on from there and seeing what can happen, you know, given that decision…
BN: I mean, I think at the end of the day, a decision has been made to follow a process. And the point of that process, if we need to become more imaginative about how we’re going to go about that process, then I’m all for that. If it entails, for instance, that we’re going to need to go back and down that road, especially if there’s a realignment of DECs or autonomy when it comes to budgeting decisions, I’m willing to go that way. I’m certainly happy to follow any process that furthers along the needs of those facilities.
And certainly, full disclosure, I also presently sit as the vice president of Sackville 20/20. And if you go to our sackvilleschools2020.com domain on the internet, you’re going to find a proposal about what we see as being the possibilities for education and facilities in Sackville. Now, I’m certainly not asking that this be a referendum on Sackville 20/20. I’d love to support and celebrate all the schools that are here. But I don’t think it does any of us good to hat-in-hand, wait patiently in line until our turn comes or, move that we occasionally send a letter to Fredericton hoping that they would speed up the process.
CHMA: Alright, Brian, is there anything else that you want voters to know?
BN: That this is a wonderful place. That education is huge for for the future of our community. If people want to worry about economic development, people coming this way gotta have jobs and gotta have a place to bring their kids, and be proud of bringing their kids.
I want people to know that I’m extremely passionate about school, about the education of our children, as our collective future goes. And that I have the great ability to see the big picture as to what our education can look like, and also the ability to see how that would work out in practice.
And I think that’s really the key to to understanding it all.
I’m running for for the kids today, for the kids tomorrow, and running for Tantramar.
CHMA: Alright, many thanks, Brian. I appreciate the time.
BN: Happily, take care Erica.
