By Rym Ghazal
Fed up with not having a say in how his community’s children are educated, a Somalian man is running as Centretown’s French public school board trustee.
Ahmed Muse says his campaign to unseat 12-year incumbent Jean Paul Lafond in this November’s trustee elections is aimed at giving parents – and the Somalian community – better representation in the Somerset-Kitchissippi-River-Capital Ward.
Muse, a 43-year-old father, says he never saw Lafond identify himself at school meetings. As a result, parents couldn’t pick Lafond out as a trustee and there was little dialogue with the elected representative.
Trustees should involve parents more by giving them jobs at schools, Muse argued.
Lafond, 67, says he is running again “to go back to finish what I have started.”
Last year, Lafond developed a reading program for children with special needs.
He also helped develop a language camp so children can learn French over the summer months.
Meanwhile, in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Somerset-Kitchissippi Ward trustee Joan Spice faces no competition at the polls.
Her trusteeship assured, Spice moved to quell fears that trustees’ hands are tied by school board supervisor Kyle Murray, appointed last winter by Education Minister Elizabeth Witmer to replace Merv Beckstead.
Under Ernie Eves’ Progressive Conservatives, trustees only had the power to make recommendations to the supervisor, brought in by the province soon after the school board prepared a deficit budget.
But Spice said she and the other trustees will likely be reinstated by Dalton McGuinty’s new Liberal government.
A public education stalwart and former chair of the Ottawa-Carleton Assembly of School Councils, Spice says she wants to bring students who’ve gone to private schools back to the public system.
“In my opinion, public schools are the foundation of democracy,” says Spice.
In her first term as trustee, Spice, 58, established the “transfer policy,” allowing parents to choose schools outside their neighbourhoods.
In the French Catholic school board’s Rideau-Vanier-Somerset Ward, Diane Lemieux-Trudel has two opponents, Diane Doré and Jean-Jacques Desgranges.
Lemieux-Trudel, 50, is running for the third time and has been a trustee for six years. She wants to secure what she calls an “equitable share of public funds.”
The French Catholic school board covers the area between the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, as well as between and including Ottawa and Trenton.
“We cover as much area as the country of Belgium itself,” she says, adding the large swathe of land under her board’s jurisdiction creates unique challenges.
Doré, 57, an ex-teacher and former municipal councillor, says her focus will be on younger students.
Desgranges was not available for comment.
Nor was Thérèse Maloney Cousineau, the acclaimed trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board’s Rideau-Vanier/Rideau-Rockcliffe/Somerset Ward.