Kathleen Carlsen will soon be sworn in as the newest member of the New Westminster school board.
Carlsen topped the polls in the Feb. 3 school trustee byelection. Four New West residents put their names forward with the hope of filling the vacant seat on the school board: Jalen Bachra (Community First New West); Carlsen (New Westminster Progressives); Alejandro Diaz; and Shawn Sorensen.
While the official numbers won’t be released until Monday, unofficial results showed Carlsen topped the polls with 1,628 votes, followed by Bachra (1,390), Sorensen (575) and Diaz (355).
As the nine polls started reporting their results, Carlsen took the lead and never trailed.
Carlsen, a member of the New Westminster Progressives, will join current trustees Maya Russell, Marc Andres, Danielle Connelly, Cheryl Sluis, Gurveen Dhaliwal and Elliot Slinn on the school board.
A spokesperson for the school district told The Record the new trustee would take their oath of office on Feb. 13, at the earliest.
Carlsen believes hard work and years of experience advocating on behalf of kids is what helped her win the election.
“I am have so much positive energy. I am ready to get started,” Carlsen told the Record on election night. “I feel proud. I feel ready. I feel excited. All good things.”
Carlsen congratulated the other three candidates and encouraged them to continue advocating for the kids. She encourages community members to ask questions and bring issues forward.
“I am open,” she said. “We may not agree with thing, but you can’t shut people down; you have to include everybody."
Since the October 2022 local election, Connelly has been the lone New West Progressive member of the school board. Community First trustees filled the other six other seats, until Dee Beattie resigned in June.
Carlsen said she will second every single motion Connelly makes – whether or not she agrees with it.
“When a motion is not seconded, there is no discussion, and I believe in democracy,” she said. “We may not agree on everything, but I absolutely believe that we all need to be able to speak and bring our perspectives, our experience; that’s how we work together. Saying that you are collaborative and saying that you are inclusive and not listening to others or not seconding their motion so you can actually listen is not the way to lead.”
Although she ran with the New West Progressives, Carlsen said her decision to run for school board was about the kids – not politics.
“Anybody who knows me knows I have been running for the kids. I am not running for a party. I am not running for anything other than the kids,” she said. “I ran with a party because that is the only way to win in this city, which I do not agree with. I do not think it’s fair that you have to run with a political party in order to win in New Westminster.”
The byelection was triggered by the resignation of former trustee Dee Beattie, a Community First candidate who resigned in September 2023. It was revealed in June 2023 that she had been posting negative comments to parents and community members on Twitter (now X) under a fake name, which prompted her to take a leave of absence in June and resign from the board in September.
The byelection is Carlsen’s second attempt at winning a seat on school board. In the October 2022 election, she placed eighth in the nine-person race for seats on the board of education, missing out on the final spot on school board by 348 votes.
Beattie factor?
Bachra, a first-time candidate for school board, trailed Carlsen by 238 votes when the final ballots were counted.
Preliminary results showed he received the most votes of the three candidates during the Jan. 31 advance voting in Queensborough, as well as at the Queen Elizabeth Elementary School polling station on election day.
“I learned a lot about myself, the community. It was really nice seeing everyone come together. Obviously it is not the result we would have wanted but it’s not a sad day,” he told the Record. “I feel like we accomplished a lot.”
Bachra, 21, graduated from New Westminster Secondary School in 2020.
“I was able to get people excited about maybe having a younger perspective on the board. And that’s what this was all about for me,” he said. “I was a student trustee on the board – I served that for a year, and I’ve always felt that we needed a voice like that permanently on the board. So that’s why I did this.”
Bachra said he is grateful for the great support he’s received from Community First and appreciates the mentorship provided by the group.
“I just want to say thank you. This was an amazing experience. To all the supporters, the volunteers we had, and every single person that voted for me, I appreciate it all,” he said. “Taking chance on a 21-year-old is maybe something not a lot of people thought they would have done.”
Bachra said he knew the election race was going to be “an uphill battle” based on the resignation that triggered the byelection.
“But I think we did well. We dug our way up,” he said. “I got very close – within about six per cent.”
Following Saturday night’s election, Community First issued a news release in which it congratulated Carlsen on her win.
Maya Russell, school board chair, said Bachra ran an incredibly thoughtful and principled campaign.
“He inspired voters, he brought in new voters, he inspired the Queensborough community. This is a young leader with a long career ahead of him, and we hope it’s in New Westminster,” she said in the news release. “Despite having an incredible candidate, we understand voters were disappointed and hurt by the actions that led to this byelection.”
Low turnout
Turnout in the 2024 school board byelection was better than the previous byelection – but it was still incredibly low.
According to the electoral officer, the turnout for the 2024 school board byelection was 7.16 per cent of the 55,161 eligible voters. That includes the 55,087 electors who were on the voters list as of December 2023 and the 76 new registrations received at this year’s voting opportunities.
Voter turnout is typically low in byelections.
In the June 2016 school board byelection in New Westminster, just 4.05 per cent of voters casting ballots to fill the vacancy on school board.
