Bob Schroeder is the Program Manager at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern BC, and has been in the community for over 30 years now.
“Through my work with parents, children, and youth in the community, whether it’s directly in the community or through the schools, and also as my own son went through school here, I started to realize I think we have a lot of challenges in the school district that I think I could have some real input into solving,” he said.
“As I started looking more and more at it, I realized there are a lot of smaller issues, but there’s a lot of bigger issues that I think maybe we’re not tackling in the right way.”
Schroeder said more and more people have been coming to him in the community to tell him of their experience, which inspired him to run for trustee.
“The biggest piece is making sure that students, parents, guardians, teachers, support staff are all being heard at that district level, because I don’t think that’s happening very well right now,” Schroeder said.
He added the issue most important to him is the culture of politics that have come into the school district.
“It’s now ok for people to bring their politics into education, and make it a battleground for their politics, and I think that is very wrong” Schroeder said.
“What I want to do is bring back a culture of educations where politics is great, we need to do that and have all those discussions and debates, but we should not use children’s education as a battleground for our politics.”
He said that is filtering down, and having a negative impact on staff and students.
The municipal elections, along with the School Board elections will take place on Saturday.
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