Seine River school trustee proposes fewer trustees

There may be fewer board trustees to choose from in Seine River School Division (SRSD) during the next election in 2026.

Ward 3 trustee Robert Rivard put forward a notice of motion that will have the board look at the proposition and any changes to ward boundaries at its September meeting.

“In doing some research through MSBA (Manitoba School Boards Association), most smaller divisions – as a matter of fact, almost all smaller divisions – no longer have nine trustees. They have seven, six or five,” explained Rivard during the last board meeting of the school year.

In his research, Rivard said when taking away the larger Winnipeg, Brandon and Hanover school divisions, he found seven divisions have nine trustees, nine have seven trustees, and 11 divisions have six or fewer trustees.

“It is a money savings if we reduce the number of trustees. It’s not a huge amount of dollars, but if we went down to six trustees we would save over $50,000 a year just on the few trustees’ salaries that we pay,” he explained to the board.

That does not include other expenses like professional development and travel that they have accounts for.

“I don’t think we need nine trustees for a division this size. I would like to see us go down to six,” said Rivard.

The nine trustees now are divided equally into three wards. Ward 1 has the communities of St. Norbert, LaSalle and Glenlea; Ward 2 has St. Adolphe, Iles des Chenes and Lorette, and Rivard’s Ward 3 represents Ste. Anne, Richer and La Broquerie.

Rivard said he recommended six trustees because that would allow the same ward boundaries only with two instead of three trustees each. But he and the rest of the board did ask administration to bring to the Sept. 10 meeting what changing the number of trustees could look like with different options of ward boundaries or an at-large option with trustees representing the entire division with no wards.

Secretary treasurer Amanda Senkowski told trustees she had done something similar at another school division by looking at municipal population numbers.