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Stewart on slate of candidates running in unison

Saving Kwalikum Secondary School is tops on his agenda
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Martin Stewart ... school closures led to his involvement

Martin Stewart is running in School District 69 (Qualicum) against board chair Eve Flynn as an Area E - Nanoose trustee.

The Qualicum Beach filmmaker said like many people, “I wasn’t really paying attention to the whole school system,” until the possibility of school closures came up at a public meeting last October.

He said that has been the positive impact of the notorious meeting, that it presented the community with a crisis to come together and address.

He wants to leverage the “incredible wealth of the highly educated people in this region. People over 55 have so much experience to offer.”

He said the closure of Kwalikum Secondary would be detrimental to the community, including losing $3.5 million a year in benefits from the international student program. He said the current staff and board are not transparent and accountable enough with their budgeting processes which becomes a problem with issues like closing a school because the public can’t go back and look at the decisions and they don’t know if all the funds have been used properly.

Stewart is running as a member of the informal Oceanside Communities for Quality Education team running independently in most school board areas.