Orleans Star - Trustee candidates' Q&A - Published on October 14th, 2010

Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Trustee for Zone 8: Orléans-Cumberland

Lale Eskicioglu

Q: Why do you want to be the school board trustee for your zone?

A few parents I know have brought some of their concerns with the education system to my attention and suggested that I seek a role which would enable me to work on these issues. Most of the issues were regarding the cuts that have been made to a variety of services and programs. I was motivated to run because our education system is too great to let crumble by unopposed reductions to many special programs, such as:

. programs for students whose first languages are neither English nor French;

. services for immigrant families;

. proper accommodation of our gifted students;

. learning tools for our students who have special needs; and

. adequate support for our teachers who have to educate our children who have all sorts of different backgrounds, temperaments and learning needs.

I believe I can play a part in keeping all the good programs in place, bringing back some of the cancelled ones and keeping up with the changing times by supporting new programs to improve our public education system. That's why I decided to run. I know I will make an excellent school board trustee.

Q: What would be the single most important issue you would like to tackle if you are elected trustee?

There is never one single most important issue. I can list a few that will have the highest priority for me:

- Stop the burnout and job-dissatisfaction within the schools by strengthening the human resources and providing all the needed repairs and renovations to the facilities. Teachers need more educational assistants and schools need more staff. Well-being of teachers and well-being of students go hand in hand.

- Provide adequate support for many of the special programs that have suffered reductions or cancellations. Provide sufficient ESL, support programs for our gifted and special-needs children. Work towards more extracurricular activities, support programs that bring arts and physical activity to our schools.

- Work together with all the trustees, staff and other school boards for efficient sharing of resources. Establish a positive dialogue with the provincial government to obtain funding for high quality public education.

- Improve literacy rates. Work with the families to bring numeric and literacy skills to the entire family.

- I will work towards improving bilingualism rates amongst OCDSB students by providing support to French Immersion programs and by supporting French classes within regular English programs.