BURST
Early results in Vancouver’s school board race show candidates from left-leaning parties, COPE, OneCity and the Vancouver Greens, in the lead.
COPE candidates are leading, with its full slate — Suzie Mah, Melanie Cheng, Derrick O’Keefe and Gwen Giesbrecht — taking the top four spots.
OneCity’s Krista Sigurdson, Rory Brown and Sherry Breshears, along with Green candidates Julie Strilesky and Alisha Masongsong, round out the top nine, with 12 out of 149 voting places reporting.
Thirty-one candidates are vying for nine trustee positions in Vancouver.
Four incumbents are running: ABC Vancouver’s Alfred Chien and Preeti Faridkot, COPE’s Suzie Mah, and Independent Christopher Richardson.
In 2022, ABC Vancouver won four of the nine seats.
Victoria Jung was the top vote-getter with more than 69,000 votes followed by fellow ABC trustees Chien, Josh Zhang, and Faridkot. Richardson, who was on the ballot as an ABC Vancouver candidate but was dropped by the party before election day, rounded out the top five.
The remaining four seats went to the Greens, OneCity, and COPE.
During its term, the ABC-led board delivered on several campaign promises, including restoring school police liaison officers. It also oversaw major school infrastructure milestones, including the opening of the long-awaited Coal Harbour elementary school, approval of a plan to nearly double the capacity of the new elementary school in Olympic Village, and the completion of the $80 million seismic replacement of Eric Hamber Secondary.
But the term was also marked by controversial decisions, including the permanent closure of Sir Guy Carleton elementary last year and the 99-year lease of part of Sir Sandford Fleming Elementary to a developer in 2024, and broader questions about the future of public school land, transparency and public consultation.
Those debates unfolded amid continuing financial pressures driven by declining enrolment and a drop in international students.
Meanwhile, in Surrey, incumbents Terry Allen, Garry Thind, Gary Tymoschuk, Shawn Wilson, Laurie Larsen and Bob Holmes are hoping to retain their seats.
The board’s seventh seat, vacated by long-serving White Rock trustee Laurae McNally who retired after 41 years of service, was narrowly won by Laura Lattanzio, who beat second-placer Dee Reiter by 36 votes.
More to come …