St. Albert Catholic school board trustee Neill Fitzpatrick has resigned his seat after 14 years, prompting the board to hold an October byelection to fill the vacancy.
Fitzpatrick has been working in Vancouver since the start of the school year while his family remained in St. Albert. He’s returned most weekends and has been attending board meetings via Skype, an Internet phone service.
“It was getting difficult to do it because of my commitments here in Vancouver,” said Fitzpatrick, who is the executive producer of Global National, the six-o’clock national news program on Global Television.
“Also, it was getting increasingly difficult for the other trustees in the St. Albert ward to pick up my share of the workload in terms of attending parent council meetings,” he said.
Fitzpatrick tendered his resignation June 15. His decision comes after the board’s year-end review of his long-distance situation.
“I think the consensus among the other trustees was that something needed to be done,” Fitzpatrick said. “In the end I decided that a resignation was probably in the best interests of everybody.”
Fitzpatrick was first elected in the fall of 1995. He served as board chair for one year, in 2000.
“I initially got into it because my kids were very young and in school and I wanted to try and help out,” he said. “I was able to meet all kinds of great people over the years from teachers to administrators to students themselves who inspired me.”
Fitzpatrick’s experience will be missed, said board chair Dave Caron.
“Neill was very good at looking at the practical side of all our decisions. He could see the big picture and see how things would work for our students. He always put them first,” Caron said.
The board will hold a byelection Oct. 14 with the deadline for nominations falling on Sept. 16. The next regular school board elections will happen in the fall of 2010.
Finding people willing to run for school board positions has been difficult in Alberta in recent years, but Caron is hopeful that qualified candidates will step forward.
“I’ve heard informal discussions about a couple people who are expressing interest, so let’s hope they do put their name in the ring,” he said.
