By Kate Heartfield
In the days following the Nov. 13 municipal election, both the winner and the runner-up in the Centretown school trustee race were still trying to determine the reasons for the results.
Incumbent Albert Chambers, who says he was “surprised and disappointed” after the election, took only 32 per cent of the vote. School council activist Joan Spice won with 52 per cent, and David Allston, a 21-year-old university student, had a remarkably strong showing with 17 per cent.
Spice was endorsed by the Ottawa Citizen and had the support of the Save Our Schools Coalition, but Chambers was endorsed by the Our Schools, Our Communities lobby group. Their platforms weren’t very different.
“We lost the sign war. Newspaper endorsements and newspaper coverage might have been an issue,” Chambers speculated in an interview. “It would appear that I got caught at least partly in the crossfire of the school closure issue.”
Chambers voted against almost all the controversial decisions to close schools this fall. But he was a member of the board that closed the schools and parents might have blamed him for failing to stop the closures and for symbolizing the old board.
Spice says she thinks the school closure debate was a factor, but the degree to which it swayed voters is a mystery.
“I think school closures were the dominant issue in Centretown, because we had twice as many people turn out to vote than usual,” she says. “But some of that went for me, and some against me, depending on what people thought I would do.”
Spice is known for her opposition to the school closure process.
But both Spice and Chambers have said they would close schools if they thought the decision was warranted by up-to-date demographics.
Mitchell Beer, of Our Schools, Our Communities, thinks the school closure issue was the most important factor in the trustee election. In Somerset-Kitchissippi Ward, he says, over 100 volunteers canvassed for their respective candidates — an unprecedented occurrence in trustee campaigns.
“It was a marvellous exercise in grassroots democracy,” says Beer.
Two of the incumbents blacklisted by parents’ groups for supporting school closures lost their seats, but two won. Nonetheless, Beer claims victory.
“We’ve managed to bring in a majority of trustees who are willing to listen and base their decisions on the evidence,” he says.
The new board takes office in December and is scheduled to vote on two more school closures Dec. 18.
Spice says she’ll spend the next two weeks going for coffee with her new colleagues, researching the issues and going out into the ward to meet parents.
Her first priorities are the new board budget and presenting a strong case to the province for more funding. She supports selling or renting unused properties, developing partnerships with businesses and reducing senior board management to save money.
Despite the fact that his candidate lost, Beer says he expects Spice to be a good trustee.
“She’s very smart, and has an excellent technical grasp of the issues on the board. She’s one of the few people who can recite all the busing statistics verbatim and get it all right,” he says with a laugh.