BLSD plans to cut wards from 7 to 4

Border Land School Division will be cutting the number of wards in its jurisdiction ahead of the fall election season to address the growing population in the region.

The division will go from seven to four wards, merging former areas, according to a March 11 press release. No changes will be made to school catchment areas, bus routes or the number of school board trustees.

Ward 1 will include Sprague, Piney, Sundown and Buffalo Point First Nation. Ward 2 covers Vita, Stuartburn and Sundown. Ward 3 represents Emerson, Ridgeville, Tolstoi, Dominion City, Arnaud, Rosa, Woodmore and Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation. Ward 4 has Rosenfeld, Horndean, Letellier, St. Joseph, Gretna, Rosetown, Halbstadt, Sommerfeld, Altona, Gnadenfeld and Neubergthal.

Five trustees will now represent Ward 4, two trustees have seats in Ward 3 and Ward 1 and 2 have one trustee each.

Board Chair Steven Wiebe said the board discovered in 2024 that some wards had too many voters compared to the number of trustees seats. The Public Schools Act requires the school division trustees to represent the same number of voters, allowing numbers to dip below or rise above the threshold by 25 percent.

The division averages 984 voters per trustee. Wiebe said since Ward 3 had 704 and Ward 5 had 730, the division was violating the regulations.

“We’re just combining wards to go through the most efficient process we can in order to get our population numbers per trustee back in line,” he said, noting that adding more trustees would’ve required a public referendum.

The change is the first ward adjustment in the division’s history, Wiebe said.

Border Land School Division has had seven wards since its 2002 creation through amalgamating neighbouring divisions. The province, under former Premier Gary Doer’s NDP government, merged Boundary School Division No. 16, Red River School Division No. 17, Rhineland School Division No. 18 and Sprague consolidated School District No. 2439, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

Wiebe said merging the existing wards to create the new format costs ratepayers no money and is timely ahead of the Oct. 28 elections.

“The political representation hasn’t changed whatsoever. We keep exactly the same number of trustees,” he said.

“But by having some of those trustees lumped in a larger geographical wards together, we can get a more equal representation population wise.”

First Nations within school divisions gained the ability to vote on board trustees in 2025, Wiebe said, which added roughly 300 voters from Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation and 120 voters from Buffalo Point First Nation. He noted those additions helped bring the trustee-voter ratios closer to the mandated benchmark.

The motion will be up for its final reading during the April 8 board meeting. Questions can be directed to Rachel Geirnaert, the division’s secretary treasurer, at 204-624-6491 or by email at geirnaertra@blsd.ca