Longtime Catholic school trustee Jacquie Hansen will end her involvement in school politics this fall but is considering whether to run for city council.
The board chair for Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools and president of the Alberta School Boards Association is retiring from both positions in the fall.
“My last child is graduating from education and everybody is moving on to university at my house,” she said.
While she was approached to run for city council in the next election, Hansen said she still has a lot of work to do. She will make up her mind by the summer, she said.
Hansen moved to St. Albert from Vancouver 17 years ago with her husband and four children. She was first elected as a Catholic board trustee in 2001 and has since served two years each as vice-chair and and chair.
In October 2010 she was elected president of the Alberta School Boards Association, consisting of the 62 publicly funded Catholic, public and francophone school boards. The presidency ends after three years and there is no re-election. Her school board term also ends in October.
“It’s really just a natural break with me ending at the presidency level, all my children finishing school, and we’ve come to an end of a term here,” she said.
Being a school board trustee is not necessarily about accomplishing things personally but rather about advocating for the children, which is both exciting and challenging, Hansen said.
“One of the big challenges that education faces was the funding challenges from government and this year in particular we are faced with a tight budget,” she said.
“So we have to be creative in what we deliver because we have less money to do it with.”
Throughout the years, Hansen said she wanted to make sure that St. Albert remained one of the best places for education in Alberta, and that education in the province would continue to improve and achieve top rankings.
She said she will miss her work but leaves at the right time to make room for someone else.
“I managed to be involved in education both at the local level and the provincial level and I think that I was lucky to have that opportunity,” she said.
“It taught me a lot about provincial politics. It taught me a lot about public speaking, policy making and it has given me a lot of media experience.”
