Full-time kindergarten backed by Manitoba trustees

Manitoba school trustees voted overwhelmingly in support of universal full-time kindergarten when they met this week to consider issues facing boards across the province and reset their collective priorities.

The Manitoba School Boards Association hosted its 61st annual convention in Winnipeg. Approximately 300 people attended the two-day event at the Delta Hotel.

Members gave their association a strong mandate to create artificial intelligence guidelines for schools and advocate for a framework to support transient students, as well as expedited criminal record checks and quicker alerts about convicted high-risk sex offenders.

They endorsed efforts to lobby governments on a wide-ranging list of funding matters.

“Full day, every day kindergarten has been a given in many other provinces in this country for generations… That’s something that Manitoba needs to catch up on — but I’m not naive to the cost implications, both in terms of staffing and space,” Alan Campbell, incoming and returning president of the association, said Friday as the conference wrapped up.

Campbell helmed the association, which represents 38 elected boards, from November 2018 to March 2023. In recent years, he served as president of its national counterpart.

The father of two noted that most boards, including his in the Interlake, don’t have the resources to self-fund upscaling so they either offer alternating full days or half-day kindergarten.

Turtle Mountain, Evergreen, Louis Riel and the francophone district are among the outliers that currently offer it on a full-time basis.

Irene Nordheim, a regional director on the association’s executive, said her St. Vital board has been hearing positive feedback from teachers about how much faster students are progressing this year because of the new initiative.

Her region — No. 5, representing every metro division except Winnipeg — put forward a motion to call on the association to lobby Ottawa and Manitoba to give all families the opportunity to send their kindergartners to full-time programs in either English or French. The motion defined the option as “a public right and service.”

The rationale that won over members? Full-time kindergarten supports the workforce by opening daycare spaces and improves young children’s early academic achievement, enhanced social-emotional skills and school readiness.

Among their new and renewed priorities, trustees identified lobbying for funding to cover wage increases tied to the provincially negotiated teacher contract and including playground costs in new school build projects.

The membership also singled out gaps in funding for school psychologists and other health and social service professionals, educational assistants who manage behavioural challenges, and on-reserve schools generally.

Money matters aside, Evergreen trustees were successful in putting forward a last-minute emergency motion to have the association start lobbying faculties of education to expose teacher candidates to explicit and systematic instruction in foundational phonics so they can teach all children how to read.

“Only 45 per cent of our Grade 3 students are meeting expectations in reading. For Indigenous students, that number is less than 30 per cent. This is not acceptable,” trustee Jillian Yorga told the convention on Friday.

Yorga argued all pre-service teachers should at least have the option to learn about the back-to-basics approach known as “structured literacy.”

As he begins his two-year term, Campbell said he is keen to leverage the current provincial government’s respect for school boards — a stark contrast to its predecessor’s failed attempt to disband them — and expand recruitment of trustee candidates to reduce acclamations in the 2026 elections.

“We shouldn’t need an existential threat to ensure that the school boards association and that local school boards have a strong profile as the local governors of public education in Manitoba,” he said.

The longtime trustee hinted that the association is interested in how a formal co-governance model with the province, such as one in place in B.C., could work locally.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca