Post-Thanksgiving Update and Q&A Answers

Hi Neighbours!

This isn’t a review of what was served on Thanksgiving (although I do hope all of you got to spend some quality time with friends, family, and those that you care about) or how the Blue Jays did on the weekend (because well….).

It’s more to check in with you, the voters, to see if you’ve been checking out those of us running for the trustee positions.

My campaign material has been dropped off to Canada Post (love to our frontline postal workers, I’ve canvassed a fraction of what I dropped off this morning and my fitbit melted off my wrist) so that should be arriving in mailboxes soon.

What you may have missed is that I did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the Hamilton Sub-reddit last week -  https://www.reddit.com/r/Hamilton/comments/xvux4d/ama_with_ben_oreilly_school_trustee_wards_8_14/ & https://www.reddit.com/r/Hamilton/comments/xwojvj/ben_oreilly_wards_8_14_public_school_board/.

The questions and answers have been transcribed for you below:

Question:

Hey Ben, How many schools have you visited in the past year?

Answer:

Hi there, thanks for your question. By my count, we've visited six of the fourteen schools that would be under the purview of this trustee position (with the most time spent at my son's school, for obvious reasons). It's a little different for a private citizen than someone employed by the school board. If I am a successful candidate, part of my platform is regular visits to the school communities - it sounds like this is not currently done, and I would like to change that.

Question:

Hey Ben, As someone who watched closely the last shameful HWDSB term unfold, I was admittedly very excited to learn Ahona Mehdi was going to be running in the same race as you - as both her experience inside the HWDSB as a student trustee and her work with Hamilton Students for Justice to me shows a deep understanding of the issues with the board, and a passion to fix them.

With that said - I don't think there's much reason to ask why you are running against incumbent Becky Buck - but I would like to ask why you think that you would make a better trustee than Ahona Mehdi?

Answer:

Hi there, thanks for your question.  I was never a student of this board (even though I was a student at a public board) so I would have less direct exposure to the ongoing issues that have been identified. When I read about the issues (at least the ones most frequently flagged in our local media) I knew that I wanted to try and be part of the way forward. My candidacy is one of genuine and authentic desire to improve things for our students, staff and parents – I wouldn’t have gone down to City Hall if I didn’t think I could meet the moment.

So based on your question, I think these strengths of my candidacy would appeal to you:

- In my role working at Conservation Authorities (CAs), I have gained very valuable interpersonal skills in conflict mitigation and management. I’ve had years of engaging with members of the public while performing my work (in person and over the phone) and have always maintained my professional composure and agreeable demeanour in all situations. I feel like these skills are directly transferable to working a school board trustee. The world is becoming a place where we aren’t listening to one another - we seem to be losing our great listeners or they are being drowned out. I will be that great listener that it sounds like is needed at this time (at least, in our wards). I want to be that consensus builder.

- I will be a Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) advocate amongst the trustees, which I think is missing there. The government recently released their “Plan for students to catch up”, with an increased focus on STEM fields. I have undergraduate and master’s degrees in science, and work in a STEM career, so I want to bring my wealth of experience to the board. I am passionate about boosting opportunities in STEM for historically marginalized (in the STEM fields) demographics including young women and racialized groups.

- My mother was a high school teacher (shout out to all teachers on this, World Teachers’ Day), so I grew up around schools since I was a child. She was an Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) Branch President, and I vividly remember the labour unrest of the late 1990s. With the possibility of potential strike action for certain key staff in our schools, I would be an asset as someone who has lived through that experience as a young student.

- My son recently started Kindergarten at one of the HWDSB Schools, so I have literal “skin in the game” for the next chapter of our lives.

Question:

Hi Ben

What are your thoughts about economically integrating students in the HWDSB, sending students from the wealthiest school in your wards and swapping them with students from the poorest?

Do you think that would be an effective way to address inequity and improve outcomes across the school board?

Answer:

Hi there, thanks for your question. One of the things I am really passionate about is active transportation - only something like 28% of students are using active transportation to get to school. The cognitive benefits of using active transportation are immense, and I want to champion this at the School Board (also, my academic background is in Climate Change Science so there are those benefits as well). I would have to see the business case for economic integration focused on the requirements of busing students - if this is something that would hugely expand busing requirements, at a time when I would be trying to get LESS students on vehicles (if possible) as well as the school board having trouble meeting the sheer number of bus drivers they are already in need of, then it would be a difficult sell.

Question:

Why did you decide to run for trustee?

What is the main thing that you would like to accomplish if elected?

Answer:

Thanks for the question. I decided to run because our family, much like all your families out there, lived through the constant disruption of the pandemic so I empathize with our students, parents, and staff (and at the time, my son was only in pre-school, so he wasn’t missing any formal curriculum). I want to be part of the solution for helping all our students and staff recover from this massive disruption. If we don't roll up our sleeves and help our most vulnerable recover, then it will be as if we ascended the ladder and then kicked it out behind us.

If elected, I would like to help our school board recover by promoting spending more time in nature, both on school grounds and off school grounds. I want to promote active transportation to school (enormous cognitive benefits), opportunities to be in nature while on school property (natural classrooms and rain gardens) and more opportunities to be in nature off school property, to take advantage of the bounty of options in our local community (Conservation Areas, Royal Botanical Gardens, Waterfront and Bruce Trail, and City Parks). Education in our Natural environment is hugely beneficial, and the benefits would be experienced by the full complement of our students, educators, and community groups. This would be my catalyst.

Question:

How will you make schools safe(r) for queer and gender variant kids? neurodiverse kids? new comers?

Answer:

Thanks for the question. Our schools MUST be welcoming and safe spaces for all of our students (and educators). I think a trustee's role is to model this behaviour, so that it becomes normalized and unquestioned (the old adage is the fish rots from the head). We can combat racism/xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other-ing in our schools by setting an example for our children. These behaviours are not innate in our kids (children play with everyone without prejudice), they are learned behaviours which means they can be combatted through the hard work of difficult and compassionate conversations with the entire community. This is important to me as a parent to a young (4 yo) child at one of the HWDSB schools - I want him to grow up with less other-ing - it's not healthy for our children or our community.

Question:

Excuse my ignorance but what does a school board trustee do? What kind of issues do they vote on?

Answer:

Thanks for the question. You can think of school board trustees like any other board of directors, influencing the strategic direction of the school board, working closely with the Director of Education (the HWDSB just hired a new Director, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, the board's first ever female Director) and serving the full complement of the school board: the students, staff, parents and community (as school's can and do function as community hubs). They vote on the School Board's budget (HWDSB's is quite large at >$625 Million) and make decisions on allocation of resources (for example, for school renovations and potential closures). In essence, they are the public-facing side of the school board. They lead by example (or should) because unless you have a child in the schools, you typically only hear from the school board through these individuals.

What they DO NOT do is control the curriculum - so if you have a candidate talking about how they are going to single-handedly change the curriculum at the school board, they do not know what they are talking about.

Question:

Sorry I'm late, probably missed the boat here, but: Both you and Ahona seem like excellent candidates for School Board Trustee, but I'm worried that between the two of you, the vote will be split enough that Becky Buck will be re-elected. I really like your stance on environmental integration. If you were put in a position where only one of you would likely receive enough votes to have a chance of stopping this, would you voice your support for another candidate? I am quite disturbed by Becky Buck's unsolicited endorsement by the "anti-woke" twitter handle.

Answer:

Thanks for the question. Thanks for the kind words on the platform - it's nice to get feedback on it from voters. With respect to vote splitting, this has always been a consideration in partisan politics, less so in non-partisan (municipal-level) - or perhaps it just hasn't been studied to the same degree. Where I do think we should be mindful, and I've made it one of my talking points whenever possible, is voter turnout. The voter list for our two wards identifies 34,450 possible voters (my list is a week or two old so it could be a little larger than this) for the trustee position - in 2018, only 11,144 ballots were actually cast for the trustee candidate (a 32% turnout using today's list, probably slightly higher given there would be some population growth between 2018 and 2022). Low turnout elections (like municipal elections tend to be, compared to Federal and Provincial) are hard to generate turnover in elected officials. This is where I have been focusing, and where informed voters should probably focus - spread the word and make sure everyone you know votes on October 24th (or before then at the advance polls).

If the above Q&A prompts you to want to know more about anything, please feel free to contact me at any time – I’d be happy to engage with you on any issue you find important.

Best,

-Ben