The Greater Victoria school board is guaranteed to look substantially different after the Oct. 20 election with the decision by three stalwarts not to run again.
Chairwoman Edith Loring-Kuhanga, Peg Orcherton and Deborah Nohr will all be on the sidelines.
For the 60-year-old Loring-Kuhanga, who has chaired the board for the past four years, stepping aside is “bittersweet.” She has been a trustee for 10 years, three in the Saanich school district and seven in the Greater Victoria school district.
But other duties are taking up much of her time, Loring-Kuhanga said, including working as a consultant for the Stein Valley Nlakapamux School in Lytton.
“I also got elected for my band council up in Hazelton,” said Loring-Kuhanga, a member of the Gitxsan Nation. “That’s a four-year position.”
She said she is torn about leaving.
“My heart is in Victoria and we’ve done so much incredible work there, but I just couldn’t realistically do justice to all three places anymore.”
Issues ranging from enrolment priorities to the future of Victoria High School have been prominent during her tenure, Loring-Kuhanga said.
“We’re partway through some of those huge projects, like Vic High, like our boundary review.”
She said she would like to see the election bring some continuity to the board table.
“I’m hoping that some of the board members are re-elected so there’s some consistency across into the next board.”
Nohr, 67, has spent two terms on the board and said she is leaving at a time when there is “positive energy” in the boardroom, along with a renewed openness. She said that she and her husband have sold their house, bought a boat that they are living on and plan to spend a lot of time sailing.
Nohr said she is content that during her time a strategic plan was implemented after input by several groups. The strategic plan deals with a number of key areas, including student achievement, First Nations learning support and community involvement, she said.
Orcherton, 63, departs after five elections, starting in 2002. She didn’t really think about how long she might stay when she started out.
“When you’re involved in something you just continue and you’ve got momentum and you want to keep building on that,” she said. “This last term I started to think about whether I would run or not.
“I’ve got 16 years of a pretty good record, I think, and I think I contributed. I found it very fulfilling, very challenging.”
Leaving the board was inevitable, Orcherton said, and the time is right for her.
“At some point we’re not indispensable and I think we have to make room for other people,” she said. “I know there’s people that will be picking up the baton.”
Students are at the centre of a trustee’s role, Orcherton said.
“Supporting the kids has always been the best thing,” she said.
The greatest rewards for her have come from attending school functions and seeing students achieve, Orcherton said.
“Education is very important and we need to continue to have trustees that are putting students first.”
Highlights that come to mind for Orcherton include recent work on the district’s inclusion policy.
“That’s where I think the next big challenge is for our schools, getting support for our special-needs students.”
Keeping schools as part of the community should also be a priority, she said. “Over the period of time I was a trustee there were eight schools that closed,” Orcherton said. “I wasn’t supportive of closing schools except for Sundance, and that was just because the school was so small.”
She said there will be continued stability at the administrative level in the district with former deputy superintendent Shelley Green succeeding Piet Langstraat as superintendent over the summer.
