A career dedicated to education is winding down as the chair of the Foothills School Division is downsizing.
Larry Albrecht, the chair and one of two Okotoks trustees for the public system, is not seeking re-election in the Oct. 18 election as he is moving to Calgary at the end of the term to be closer to family.
“My wife and I are at that stage where we are downsizing and moving to do this,” Albrecht said. “The last four years have been absolutely amazing and I am privileged to be able to serve.”
Albrecht spent his adult life in education. He taught in Brooks, and got his first taste of working with the Foothills School Division as principal of Highwood High School in High River in the late 1990s.
“I could not have chosen a better career for myself,” Albrecht said.
“All of the ups-and-downs but it is so rewarding. I had the opportunity to work as a teacher, an administrator and then working with Alberta Ed and then as a trustee.
“I loved it. I got to see all the angles of working in education.”
Plenty of educational experience, but one practically needed to be a combination of teacher, lawyer, parent and doctor to manouevre through the past two years and the COVID pandemic.
“It certainly strengthened our board — we are a very strong board,” Albrecht said. “It’s been extremely difficult. One of the pieces for me was being able to support our superintendent and every staff member in the division. Those folks are hardest hit. To provide support for them will continue to be critical.
“It can be a nasty world and we have experienced that over the last while. To be able to stand-up and shield that and say: ‘This is the direction that we are going and here are the reasons.'
“We support every staff member and I think that is critical.”
Even without COVID, there have been challenges.
“There were a lot of unknown challenges, but we had a good team of trustees,” Albrecht said. “I think we were able to accomplish a great deal.”
The division had two of its original members having to resign from the board and superintendent Chris Fuzessy was hired midway through the trustees’ term.
Albrecht is proud of his tenure as trustee — and right from the start of his education career, he has seen the importance of the job.
“Local trustees are a vital part of putting that context of community into the educational system,” Albrecht said. “Every school division has different needs context- wise. To take that and create policy and put resources in place for the delivery of quality education is critical.
“In my humble opinion, if you didn’t have local school boards and it was a larger regional or provincial governance model, I think you lose all that.
“Suddenly, you are treated all the same and we are not all the same. We need to have that local representation.”
He said local boards also provide a greater voice for parents in the education system. He said some examples would include the new Nature-based outdoor learning program at École Percy Pegler School, French Immersion as well as dealing with the COVID pandemic.
“Dealing with COVID, we have heavily relied on the public voice through all of our engagement pieces,” he said. “Even budgeting, we have done lots of public engagement where the public tells us this is an area that we think needs focus and that helps the board to refocus and move forwards.”
As of of Sept. 16, incumbent Sharon Nichols and Glenn Stieben were running for the two Okotoks seats on the Foothills School Division board. The deadline for nominations is Sept. 20 at noon.
