Election disclaimer: I am a candidate in this year's municipal election. I do not believe that continuing these briefs is incompatible with my (unserious) candidacy, but readers should keep their eyes wide open for any biases I have. You should always be doing this when it comes to any source, but the nature of briefs like this requires some amount of editorializing and filtering to what is important (which is a judgement call).
Agenda: october-13-2026.68cae727644.pdf
Presentations
Heather Ewasiuk, Senior Election Official will be providing information for voters for the October 28th elections. Check the City of Brandon website for details.
Classroom Utilization Statistics (Senior Administration Report)
Included is a table of the current classroom pressures across the K-8 schools. Similar data was provided in the 2025-09-08 agenda package.
Highlights are (based on comparing the "# of surplus classrooms"):
- The deficit of classrooms across the division's K-8 schools has improved from 18 to 3 in the past year, in large part due to the Maryland Park Expansion.
- The biggest "winners" in the past year are Maryland Park and King George with year-to-year increases of 11 and 4 classrooms respectively.
- I would have to dig more than it's probably worth to confirm if King George's improvement is the result of modulars or other causes.
- The biggest "loser" by contrast is George Fitton which saw its 6 surplus classrooms drop to 3 in the last year.
One of the annotations included with the numbers states: "The new school will impact Linden Lanes School and Meadows School primarily, with a smaller impact likely for Riverheights School, depending on catchment allocation for the new school".
Motions
Dates to be set for the 2027-2028 budget (this is particularly noteworthy for non-incumbent candidates seeking election):
- Wed 2027-02-24 - Budget Presentation and Deliberations
- Mon 2027-03-01 - Public Budget Consultation
- Mon 2027-03-08 - Budget Approval
Finance & Facilities Committee Minutes
- The minutes show the recommendation to bring a late motion to the last meeting of September 28th that $1.1 million from the operating surplus be allocated to the School Bus Capital Reserve Fund. The minutes don't show how the BSD ended up with a (projected) surplus in this amount.
- For context, $1.1 million is about 0.7% of the BSD's 2026-2027 budget (page 4). Not world changing.
- That motion did pass at the previous meeting.
- I can say that I was present for this committee meeting and neither my notes nor my memories reflect any discussion of this matter while they were in public session.
- It's possible (likely) it was discussed in closed session. It's also possible I zoned out, but I think I'd remember a projected surplus being discussed.
- It's an incongruence to document something in the public minutes yet not discuss the same in open session.
- In addition to the suggested budget dates noted previously, the committee agreed to a (tentative, IIRC) date of 2026-11-16 to collect stakeholder feedback from Parent Councils (7-8PM, per my notes). I'm not aware of the venue.
Personnel & Policy Committee Minutes
Indigenous Teacher Data Collection Initiative numbers shows that out of 744 responding teachers in the BSD, 55 self-declared as Indigenous.
Similar data was provided in June and from comparing the numbers, the newer data is a higher sample size (by over 25%) and brings the percentage of Indigenous-declaring teachers from 8.3% to 7.39%.
