VIDEO: Voters hear directly from Chilliwack School Board candidates at public forum held Oct. 8
Fourteen out of 18 of those running for seven trustee positions gathered to face questions posed by former mayor and former superintendent
There haven't been many chances to hear directly from Chilliwack School Board candidates in advance of the local election on Oct. 17, but there were a couple of events held in recent days.
On Saturday, candidates gathered at Serene Stay & Play Café for a meet-and-greet where members of the public could come and chat one-on-one with school board hopefuls.
The only other event was on Thursday (Oct. 8) at the Grand Hall in District 1881. Fourteen out of the 18 were able to attend the event co-moderated by former Chilliwack mayor Clint Hames and former School District 33 superintendent Corinne McCabe.
The format saw groups of four or five candidates at a time on a panel answering questions based on six broad themes provided in advance. Each candidate had one minute to answer each question as well as a one minute intro.
Because of a pause in the proceedings to await a couple of candidates who had to run errands, McCabe asked an extra question with all candidates allowed a chance to respond. That question was: "What do you think is the biggest challenge that the district will face in the next four years?"
The six themes that each candidate received two questions about were:
- The role of a school trustee: Understanding trustee responsibilities, governance, and the skills or experience a candidate would bring to the role.
- Student learning and achievement: How the Board can support student success across a diverse range of needs and circumstances.
- Budget, resources and priorities: How candidates would approach limited resources, competing priorities, and difficult budget decisions.
- Safe, inclusive and supportive schools: What safety, belonging, accessibility, and inclusion should look like for students and staff.
- Parents, families and community: What meaningful parent and caregiver involvement in public education looks like in practice.
- Effective governance and Board relationships: Teamwork, respectful disagreement, accountability, collective decision-making, and working with district leadership.
Here is the complete video a little under one hour and 45 minutes in length. The audio, unfortunately, is really poor and much of it is hard to hear. It should also be noted that the automatically generated captions are riddled with inaccuracies. (Note: Absent from the meeting were Marina Garmon, Hugh Hamilton, Sudakar Meganathan and Brian Vangarderen who couldn't attend because he is a teacher and the meeting was held from 2 to 4 p.m.)
In the interests of shameless self-promotion, here is the text of the three questions I answered at the meeting along with the time stamps from the video – PJH, Oct. 11, 2026
Question 1: "Student achievement: Primary focus of the board. What more do you think should be done to improve student achievement?"
Time in video: 23:11 - 24:22
“I want to quickly say the role of the trustee is important in this. I like to use the metaphor of the hockey team. The trustee is not the coach or a player [or the owner], the [trustee] is like the general manager, not involved in the daily operations of what the coach is doing.
“I believe the role of the teacher is key. We need to support our teachers, 95 per cent of what happens in education, is one adult standing in front of 25 up to… too many kids. And we need to support the teachers to do the best job and that’s where academic achievement comes from.
“I think of my kids and some of their best teachers. I think of Mme. Gibbs at Cheam Elementary in Kindergarten. I think of Mr. Cino at CMS who is just amazing. And Mr. Massie at Sardis Secondary right now who is whipping my son into shape, I hope.
“These are the people that you remember. I was not a super academic achiever but I remember specific teachers and we need to support them.”
Question 2: What do you think is the biggest challenge that the district will face in the next four years?
Time in video: 47:25 - 48:34
“I stuck my hand up right away because I believe it’s not the most popular topic, but I firmly believe artificial intelligence is the biggest issue.
“In the last four year since 2022 – I mean it’s been around since the 1950s – but in four years it’s gone from the very beginnings of ChatGPT to, it’s everywhere.
“I’m actually currently working for AI companies as a human trainer, which sounds insane I know, but training AI models to respond, this with a company in California.
“Our students need to know what it is. They need to know what the dangers are, what the possibilities are, from you know, worst-case scenario we could have the apocalypse. Best-case scenario we’ve got a tutor sitting on the shoulder of every student in the whole district.
“Or something in between.
“It’s a global problem. It will be a problem in the district in the next four years. It will change so much in the next four years.”
Question 3: What does parent involvement look like to you assuming you think we need more of that?
Time in video: 1:12:26 - 1:13:31
“We can’t talk to every parent. And when you do start talking to parents you hear from the loudest parents and then you get a skewed view of things.
“We need to continue with the process we already use. The PACs are great and then they feed up to the DPAC and then the DPAC is the greatest way for the board to communicate with parents.
“It’s really the safest way.
“Knowledge is power and we need to listen and learn.
“I’ve said my campaign motto is ‘make school board boring again,’ which is a little tongue in cheek. It’s about not discussing matters that are not in our lane.
“Since we were sitting here, I got an alert on my phone and I looked at it, and it said ‘SOGI is pure evil and from Satan.’
“So we need to just ignore the trolls, ignore comments like that. “Again, stay in our lane and listen overall to parents, listen to all parents, not just the loudest ones.”
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Paul J. Henderson
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