Alberta residents went to the polls last week in municipal and school board elections. The group “Parents for Choice in Education” had published an online assessment of a number of public and Catholic school board candidates in advance of the election, particularly with respect to where they stood on things such as parental notification and parental rights. Executive Director Donna Trimble says they were able to list more than 200 trustees in 16 regions across Alberta in their online “vote wisely” voter’s guide, and they’re very pleased with the traffic that was generated on the site. She says the goal was to “increase the number of people that were thinking about and paying attention to” the trustee races. She says her group didn’t endorse any candidates, but they have now heard of trustees across the province that shared the PCE material, and who have now been elected.

But Trimble says the job of parents isn’t over. She says while there are now trustees who are aware of the issues that PCE has been raising around issues such as parental notification, it’s “really important” that parents call the newly-elected trustees who might be sympathetic to the case of parental rights. “Sit down, have a conversation with those trustees, (because) if you’re not talking to them, someone is.”