Before the Ballot- School Trustee Edition with Ben O'Reilly, Candidate for Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board Trustee (Public) – Wards 8 and 14.

Enjoy this instalment of Before the Ballot- School Trustee Edition with Ben O'Reilly, Candidate for Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board Trustee (Public) – Wards 8 and 14.

Please tell our readers a little about yourself and what motivated you to seek election as a School Board Trustee.

My day job is as the Acting Manager of Flood Forecasting and Operations for Conservation Halton, where I’ve worked for the past ten years. I live on the West Mountain (Ward 14) with my wife and son. My mother and Grandmother were both teachers, and I am a product of our Public education system. With a child at one of the HWDSB schools, I look at this role as a duty to provide the best quality education to our children to set them up for a lifetime of success. I stood for this position in 2022 but was unsuccessful, so I’ve spent the last four years sitting on the School Council of our local school (Chedoke Elementary) becoming deeply familiar with the issues of the day facing our kids at school. I was already interested to run again after making many new connections last time, and then the Province set about tweaking the role of the Trustee, and there was a fear that they were going to remove them altogether. For that reason, it's essential for those of us who truly value local governance of our Public Education system to step-up and run.

In your view, what are the three most important issues currently facing students, parents, educators, and the school board, and how would you help address them?

The top issue in my mind, and the elephant in the room (unfortunately) is the budget deficit at the School Board, because the Province has made no secret that it is happy to install Overseers of School Boards who have been forced (through underfunding) to carry budget deficits. As an employee of a Conservation Authority (which are also in the process of losing some of their local governance due to this Provincial government) I’ve had a first-hand look at top-down loss of decision making due to the Province, and I just don’t want that to happen to more of our School Boards. I think the Board needs to get serious and creative about tackling the deficit, because if it becomes structural it will lose its autonomy. As a trustee, there are limited levers available, but I would be open to any suggestions and creative ideas from the Director of Education to set the Board on the path towards a balanced budget.

The second issue, really a continuation, is the underfunding of the School Boards since this government came into office in 2018. Per student funding has seen a reduction at a time when our student body was recovering from an unprecedented interruption in learning associated with the initial COVID pandemic closures and a shift to more digital learning. These interruptions have had a large impact on our students, and it’s almost unforgivable to pair this with a reduction in per student funding. As a trustee, I would continue to beat this drum at every forum and every meeting that I would be attending – our School Boards are worth funding, and they are worth funding properly.

The third issue is the impact that personal cell phones and algorithmic social media are having on our study body (and you can add Large Language Model/AI to this as well). From reduced concentration to cyber bullying and violence, we are letting down an entire generation of students without truly understanding the lasting impact this is having on their ability to learn. A few years ago, one of the principals at my son’s school said he spends most of his time refereeing and dealing with cellphone issues on a day-to-day basis – that is incredibly wasteful and takes him away from helping to deliver a great learning experience for our students.

It’s abundantly clear that the major technology companies don’t care about the health and well-being of our kids, so it's going to fall to the School Boards to protect them from the dangers of hostile digital environments. As a trustee, I would like to contribute to this domain through work on committees and lobbying other levels of government for help.

A trustee's role is one of governance rather than day-to-day management. How do you see the relationship between trustees, board administration, and school principals?

I see the Trustees role as being a true promoter and champion of public education, while at the same time being able to plug themselves into each community without missing a beat. From a deep knowledge of the schools under their purview, to close relationships with the administration at the schools, to providing the important local governance needed at the Board level, an ideal trustee has that holistic knowledge of their ward(s). If I were to be trustee, I would like to be informed of any major issue at the schools, and what is being done to correct the problem. It is through open lines of communication over long periods of time that chronic or structural problems can be identified and sorted out. While the Province has tweaked the role of the Trustees earlier this year, their governance role remains intact and essential to the success of the board. I would rather have our Board of eleven trustees than one overseer who is not familiar with the board at all.

What changes or improvements, if any, would you like to see in the delivery of education within our local school system over the next four years?

Besides more money? One thing I’d really like to see is more environmental-based learning and field trips. We are so blessed here in Hamilton with many great natural areas, and I would love for the students to be able to take more field trips to our local Conservation Areas, the Bruce Trail and Royal Botanical Gardens. I am familiar with how expensive School Buses have gotten, so even more local environmental projects like getting a Rain Garden installed at a School can provide the students that outdoor time that is lacking in today’s age. There is much primary research that suggests this has enormous benefits for learning, so I hope it’s an avenue our schools can look at to improve educational outcomes. 

Another thing I would like to see more of is more community-building and active transportation – after the last election I met some other parents who were interested in setting up a Bike Bus to get their kids to school and participating in that was great both for the kids and for myself (it wasn’t even my kid’s school!). In terms of community building, we’ve lost many of our “third spaces” over the past years, and we then wonder why our kids are spending more time indoors and on screens than we did. I’d like to see if we could replicate the pilot project that was done at Strathcona Elementary School with its “School Street” street closure in front of the school at drop-off, where appropriate. The ability of the student and parent body to come together for something like that is excellent – we’ve seen events like that at school open houses, but that is once a year – if you could pair that with other community building events, the school student body and community will benefit.

Why should voters place their trust in you? What qualities, experience, or perspective would you bring to the role of School Board Trustee that distinguish you from the other candidates?

In my role at Conservation Halton, we are responsible for the operation and maintenance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of flood control infrastructure that is needed to keep the public safe. Much like the School Board, there typically isn’t the amount of money we’d like to have to correct identified deficiencies, so we take a risk management approach and prioritize projects based on need. I also receive a lot of emails and phone calls from residents/neighbours of our infrastructure, so I am used to dealing with the public daily. I see these aspects of my job being directly transferable to the School Board.

I’ve submitted and presented reports to our Board of Directors and taken questions from the elected Councillors and Mayors on our Board, so I am familiar with governance bodies and how they function. 

I have a child at one of the HWDSB schools and having a Parent Voice not just at a School Council but at the Board is an asset to all parents.

My education background is in a science field, so I think I would be an asset to the board given the higher emphasis being placed on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) endeavours the past few years.

What would you like parents, students and the broader public to know about the role of a Trustee?

Think of School Trustees as local stewards of the School Board system. Our Province isn’t a monolith, and even though curriculum is set at the Provincial level, you cannot manage over 70 school boards from a central location alone – there are too many local differences and nuances. That is why trustees are so essential to the function and success of our Public education here in Ontario – they are deeply steeped and invested in the local community they serve and represent. And to be clear, Trustees have no control over the curriculum so if you have someone campaigning about any sort of culture war nonsense, it's best to completely ignore them because they are not a serious candidate for office.

How can voters contact you and/or learn more about you?

I love to hear from voters – you can send me an email to my campaign address at benoreillyward8and14@gmail.com, or find me on BlueSky at @benoreih2oguy.bsky.social.

Thank-you Ben for engaging with Hamiltonians on The Hamiltonian!