Michael Ewen was 24 years old when he first ran for the New Westminster school board. He was in university and dreamed of being elected to the legislature. School board was his first stepping stone.
But Ewen lost.
It was his one and only election loss, and, after 39 years on the New Westminster school board, he’s ready to retire.
New Westminster all his life
Ewen was born and raised in the Royal City. He attended Richard McBride Elementary School and graduated from New Westminster Secondary School in 1972. He even studied at Douglas College.
“I was actually taking a master’s degree in working class history and was planning to go work in the labour movement and go into politics – that was the goal,” he said.
His first shot at public office came in 1978 when NDP MLA Dennis Cocke approached him about running for city council.
But Ewen didn’t want to run for city council; it didn’t interest him, so he opted for school board.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s, the New Westminster school district was a small district with eight elementary schools and one high school, and it was suffering from declining enrolment. There was even talk of closing three of the city’s smaller schools – Connaught Heights, F.W. Howay and Hume Park, according to Ewen.
At the board level, like other school districts in the province, the role of the trustees was simple: oversee the administration of the district and let the superintendent do the rest, and superintendents were assigned to school districts by the Ministry of Education.
“It was very much an administration-driven system,” Ewen said.
But not everyone was happy with how the education system was run, and some districts, including New Westminster, started to push for change.
A second chance
Ewen’s second chance at a spot on the New Westminster school board came in 1979, one year after his failed attempt. (Back then, school board elections took place every year, alternating between three trustees one year and four the other year.)
With dreams of becoming an MLA still top of mind, Ewen put his hat in for the ’79 race. This time, he won. He was 25 years old.
“I was actually the second-youngest person ever elected in the province – the youngest was 23,” he laughed.
Back then, trustees were just beginning to flex their muscles, and he and his fellow trustees, including eventual New Westminster MLA Anita Hagen, were looking for a way to make the community the focus of the public education system, he said.
“The large districts – Vancouver, Surrey – had been given permission to hire their own superintendents, and New Westminster, at that point, had an appointee from Victoria,” he added.
So the New Westminster school board asked the provincial government for permission to hire its own superintendent, and the province agreed. It was the second superintendent hired by the board that would be a game-changer for education in the city, according to Ewen.
Mary Lyons wasn’t a typical choice for superintendent; she was a woman, and she wasn’t an administrator – she was an educator, Ewen said.
“It changed things significantly. I think the thought back then was the districts needed to be run, and the learning part was left up to the schools and the teachers; it wasn’t so much a school district function,” he said.
His new love
Ewen didn’t expect, when he started his tenure as trustee, to love education as much as he did.
His father was a principal in Burnaby and had warned him not to go into education, but Ewen didn’t listen. Being a trustee was an exciting experience, one that provided Ewen with an opportunity to get a hands-on appreciation for education.
“I got into the schools, I liked what I saw, I thought it looked like fun. Turns out it is fun,” he said.
Two years after he became a school trustee, Ewen started teaching elementary school in Surrey, and 37 years later, he’s still there.
Ewen’s passion and love of education have served him well as a school trustee and teacher. Even when the opportunity finally came for him to run for MLA, Ewen declined and instead continued to serve as a trustee.
Leaders in education
“People don’t realize that New Westminster has been on the cutting edge of education in the province,” Ewen said.
One thing he is particularly proud of is how the school district has embraced alternate programs. Currently, the school district offers three alternate programs in New Westminster – POWER Alternate Secondary School, SIGMA (ages 16 to 18) and the Royal City Alternate program (for ages 13 to 16).
While other districts, according to Ewen, saw alternate programs as a temporary solution for struggling or troublesome students where they could go “get fixed and go back to the real school,” New Westminster didn’t.
“And at that point, in the ’80s and ’90s in particular and early 2000s, that was the common model,” he said. “Whereas our approach was always: ‘who cares how you graduate?’”
Being on the “cutting edge” still comes with its share of challenges, according to Ewen.
One of his biggest frustrations has been, and still is, the school board’s “struggle to encourage change and adaptation” throughout the entire district.
“We’ve done it mostly through alternate programs,” he said.
Programs like the district’s outdoor school, the brainchild of former New Westminster Teachers’ Union president Grant Osborne, and the fine arts mini-school offered at the high school were passion projects led by teachers, Ewen said, and many were disbanded when teachers left or funding got tight.
School board power
Ewen served the majority of his time as trustee during a period when the school board held the balance of power in the district. They had the ability to hire and fire, if needed, and trustees weren’t afraid to ask questions of administration or overrule them.
One instance stands out in Ewen’s mind.
In 2013, at the peak of the district’s financial woes (when it owed $2.8 million from the 2012 school year and was anticipating a $1 million deficit), district staff recommended the board cut elementary band from the city’s west-side schools until a new middle school was built.
The school board opposed the recommendation and voted unanimously to keep the programs.
This kind of push-back is something Ewen thinks is missing at the school board these days. He wants to see trustees hold administration accountable when it’s needed.
Words of wisdom
As Ewen prepares for his final month-and-a-half as a school trustee, he admits being a trustee today is very different than it was in 1979.
“It fundamentally changed in the 1990s,” he said.
Everything became partisan, and the “old days” when politicians of all stripes would criticize each other for hours before heading out for a beer were gone, he said.
And things have only gotten worse since 2001, when things became “hyper-partisan,” he added.
“I remember getting called in to Joyce Murray’s office, called in as chair of the board, and she railed against a single trustee – not chair or vice-chair, but a trustee who had been critical of the government, and that was just beyond the pale. That just never happened,” he said.
Since then, he’s watched the power dynamic between the board and senior admin shift and the cooperative model he and other trustees built slowly degrade.
And while he’s confident the new senior admin team – led by superintendent Karim Hachlaf – is ready to work collaboratively, he’s not sure how eager the new trustees are to ask hard questions.
“The last four years haven’t been as much fun and as productive, from my perspective. They’ve worked well for the school board, but I have a different view of trusteeship than the majority of the board, and that’s fine. I can live with that,” he said.
‘Spawn of the devil’
So what does a 39-year school trustee do when he retires?
Spend more time with his two loves – his family and his garden, of course.
“There are two or three things happening at the same time: I’m looking to retire as a teacher sometime this year, and I think it’s a nice transition,” he said.
But just because he’s retiring doesn’t mean he’ll ride off into some sunset, he said. He’s already looking forward to the election race and is excited to see a new and diverse group of trustee candidates step forward.
“I look at the people who are running, and I think it’s a good cross-section of the community, it’s a good representation of the community,” he said.
As for legacy, Ewen admits not everyone thinks of him fondly. One fellow trustee went so far as to call him the “spawn of the devil,” he recalled.
“I’ve generated a lot of negativity over the years, and a lot of support, too, but a lot of negativity because people look at one person and go, ‘You know that Michael Ewen,’” he said.
But he can’t help it.
“I can be combative,” he admitted. “I’m passionate about kids and learning and providing support for their learning. I’m passionate about making sure teachers and support staff have the tools to do the jobs. I don’t think we should ever apologize for being passionate.”
