Modernization and sustainability key themes as SD57 looks back on 2025

Regarding financial health, Brennan explained the district only spends 98% of its budget in the budgeting cycle, ensuring that 2% is available for any potential emergency situations.

“If something happens that we’re not anticipating, we don’t need to look at funding it from an unsustainable source. We have those resources within the budget. That meant the tough work was done earlier, because we had to make sure that we were able to meet those targets, but we made the tougher decisions earlier on in our term and now we’re reaping the benefits of that work,” Brennan said.

One of the biggest stories of the year for SD57 was the closure of Giscome Elementary School, which Aziz says was not motivated by potential cost savings, but motivated by what would be in the best interest of students. So far, Aziz says he’s heard from students and families that they are doing quite well since the closure.

“We had checked in with those students and families pretty consistently in September and October. Our students are having a really good experience, they’re now in classrooms with students of their own age, they’re in single or perhaps dual graded classrooms, but not the multi-grade structure that they had before, and after school programs that they can take part in,” Aziz said.

Regarding modernization, Aziz explains a lot of what’s happening likely won’t be noticed by students, as it is primarily behind the scenes work of updating systems and procedures to integrate more technology. While students will certainly notice some of it, such as getting more Chromebooks and iPads in classrooms, Aziz says many of the changes are looking at ways to improve efficiency.

“We’re a very paper-driven school district still, and a lot of districts really moved away from some of those paper driven processes 10, 15, 20 years ago. Some of the changes we’re making are not necessarily for the benefit of even myself or staff who are here over the next five years. They’re really to make sure that our district has sustainable processes for the next 10, 20, 30 years,” Aziz said.

As for Brennan and the School Board, he says a huge goal they’ve begun working on, and will continue to work on, is updating policies. Brennan says policies are what provide governance and allow the School Board to work together in a unified manner, so updating these is crucial to helping operations stay up to date.

“Some of them were written before most of the viewers were born, and those policies have been sitting on the books in some cases for almost 50 years. So a complete overhaul was was drastically needed,” he said.

“We have to be prepared to meet those changes head on, and that’s what we’re doing, we’re tackling some rather difficult topics, and other ones are fairly simple: who’s allowed to drive on a school ground for example,” he continued.

Aziz and Brennan hope the work done in 2025 and beyond will set up the district for long term sustainability and success, emphasizing the importance of continuing to modernize, find ways to become more efficient, and keep a balanced budget.

“We just really want to make sure that we don’t have to have knee jerk reactions to things on an annual basis. I think through some good fiscal management, through some real review of everything: we have reviewed HR, we have reviewed technology, we have reviewed our overall systems and operations, the way we paint schools, the way we have our schools apply for different upgrades within the buildings, a lot of that was not piecemeal necessarily, but more school driven, and we really have centralized those processes now to make them more SD57 driven,” Aziz said.

Aziz adds a big change he was looking to implement, and hopes to continue to work on, is equity, which he says is a district-wide mandate that people agree with on principle, but implementing an idea as large and broad as equity can have its challenges.

“When we talk about equity, everybody can agree that, yes, we want a more equitable system. I think the challenge sometimes arises when people benefit from inequities, and then we move to an equitable system, and some of those inequities are taken away, and people have challenges with that. I have certainly been aware of conversations and had some conversations around people’s apprehension. Change is difficult, right?” Aziz said.

“When we go back to the reasons why people can understand that this is something that needs to happen, and we just want to make sure that our students and staff are supported as we go through these changes, because we know that, whether it’s a technology change and we’re actually hiring a coordinator to make sure that there’s a point person that people can reach out to when they have hardware or software problems or just have questions about how to utilize things within classrooms, we want to make sure that structures and support in place so that our staff can do the best that they can,” he continued.

As SD57 leadership shifts attention to 2026, both Brennan and Aziz are optimistic that the work done in 2025 sets them up for another fantastic year, with Aziz adding that regardless of what you’re trying to change, it’s always important to be malleable to new information that may come up.

“The pace of change is not as predictable, so sometimes people will ask for timelines or when something is going to happen. But the reality is, when you put a change into place, then you have to actually monitor it and you have to make sure that it’s actually going the way that you’d hoped, you have to fix any of the little hiccups that will arise, and then we move on to the next transitional stage,” he said.

Both Aziz and Brennan also wanted to emphasize fantastic work done by students, especially in terms of student leadership and making their voices and ideas heard.

by Tommy Osborne

Modernization and sustainability key themes as SD57 looks back on 2025

What's Trending