Laura Dennison, a candidate for Wards 11 and 12 in the Calgary Catholic School District byelection, has a deep passion for serving the community.
She said her passion for supporting CCSD students, educators and support staff and her strong desire to give back to the district played a significant role in her decision to run, as well as her family’s journey in the CCSD system.
In an interview with LiveWire Calgary, Dennison said she has 16 years of experience volunteering for the CCSD. She was a Bishop Carroll Music Society executive for five years as well as a St. John Henry Newman School Council and Education Society participant and executive for 11 years.
She also said her career is “rooted in education” by nurturing success as well as moral and spiritual growth. Currently, she is a consultant at a local management consulting and leadership training firm. She also owned and operated her own software training and consulting company prior to her current role.
If Dennison is elected, she wants to influence policies to support the CCSD’s mission to provide quality faith-based education and academic excellence.
“I feel that being a trustee will give me the next level of influencing policy supporting the district’s mission, which is living and learning in our Catholic base so that students centred in Christ can realize their full potential. I’m driven by a desire to ensure that every student has the opportunity to thrive academically, socially, spiritually,” she said.
“As a trustee, I can advocate for the resources and programs necessary to meet the diverse needs of the Calgary Catholic School District students.”
Dennison added that she has worked closely with teachers and administration as a volunteer, and she has witnessed their “unwavering dedication” to student success even during challenging times like the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That resilience and passion actually deeply inspired me to want to — and strengthened my resolve — to advocate for our schools and the incredible people who make them thrive. I just want to be there to make sure that these teachers who are so passionate and dedicated, can do their best without any of these hindrances such as funding and and class sizes and all of that stuff,” she said.
CCSD’s pressing issues
Budgetary concerns are a big overarching issue for many CCSD schools. While the district ended the 2023-2024 fiscal year with a $8.4 million surplus (a $17 million deficit was originally budgeted), the extra money was largely due to additional provincial funding during the year and higher revenue from investment income and selling property.
Dennison said she wants to bring constituents’ and stakeholders’ voices to the table when advocating for more funding from the government. This includes engaging the population by holding forums and talking to school councils to inform community members about the CCSD budget and funding concerns.
She noted that the district had to pull money from district reserves this year to fill in the gaps, even with grants from the province.
“We need to lobby the government. We need to get a different model for funding that is better suited to our needs. The weighted moving average, which is the model that the government uses now, is not sustainable,” she said.
“It works for districts that are other populations are declining, but our populations are exploding, and they’re actually going far above any predictions that have been made.”
Dennison praised the province’s new School Construction Accelerator Program last September, which aims to tackle school capacity issues across the province by fast-tracking thousands of new spaces. This also means an increase in the K-12 capital budget to $8.6 billion. However, the new spaces will take years to build, and she raised concerns about the lack of grants and funding for additional operation expenses.
She said the CCSD also needs to come up with creative solutions to deal with capacity issues, she said. As of October 2024, more than 30 schools are more than 100 per cent utilized. Dennison said gymnasiums and library spaces can be used as classrooms to deal with class sizes and space, along with portable classrooms.
“We also need to support the teachers, as far as manageable class sizes go. Teachers can have a class of 30 students. If there’s only a few of them that have diverse learning needs, then that’s a manageable class,” Dennison said.
“If they have smaller classes that have lots of diverse needs, then they need to be supported.”
Indigenous Education
Indigenous Education is one of four pillars and priorities of the CCSD Board of Trustees. In September, the CCSD pledged to empower Indigenous youth in their schools ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This includes having an Indigenous Education Team made up of four Indigenous teacher consultants and five cultural liaisons from different cultural backgrounds Dene, Cherokee, Stoney Nakoda, Piikani and Cree.
Dennison said she agrees with the board’s priorities, but said the responsibility for Truth and Reconciliation and deepening the understanding of Indigenous people’s perspectives needs to be shared.
“We need to embrace and support Indigenous student success and belonging and walking together to nurture successful, enduring relationships with Indigenous communities,” she said.
Dennison said she plans on advocating for the federal government to provide more funding for First Nations students so they have the same educational opportunities as all the other students. This is part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, which calls on the federal government to eliminate the discrepancy in federal educational funding for First Nations children.
The commission also calls on school districts to eliminate educational employment gaps between Indigenous children and their non-Indigenous peers.
“Another important thing is proper professional development for the teachers and educators. Educators on these topics need to be available, so the professional growth opportunities for teachers need to continue with these topics and again, gathering insights from the community as to how to further facilitate these calls to action would be one of my mandates as well,” she said.
The CCSD byelection is scheduled for Jan. 31, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Advance polls are scheduled for Jan. 24 and Jan. 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information about how and where to vote, please visit the Elections Calgary website.
