Bringing valuable opinions to the table

Bethany Kolisniak, who was born in 2001, believes her upbringing as a digital native will help better serve other 21st-century students and their families in Winnipeg.

Kolisniak, 25, was sworn in last week to become one of the newest members of the Louis Riel School Division’s board of trustees.

The young woman, who does not have children and is preparing to begin law school next fall, said her identity confused some constituents when she went door-knocking in Ward 4.

But the Bonavista resident won over residents, skeptics included, to become the first person born this century to be elected to any level of government inside the Perimeter Highway.

“It’s important to remember that just because somebody’s older doesn’t necessarily mean they’re necessarily qualified or have relevant experience,” she told the Free Press.

“And that runs both ways — just because someone is young doesn’t mean they are inexperienced.”

Kolisniak has joined an exclusive group of Manitoba representatives who identify as members of Gen Z (individuals born between 1997 and 2012).

She is in the company of Radisson MLA Jelynn Dela Cruz, a fellow Filipina, and West Kildonan trustee Evan Krosney.

Dela Cruz was 23 when she was elected as an NDP MLA in 2023. Krosney secured a second term in Seven Oaks School Division on Oct. 28, about two weeks after celebrating his 29th birthday.

(Each member of the trio has ties to the Manitoba NDP. Krosney is the party’s provincial secretary while Kolisniak had worked as a constituency assistant for the current education minister.)

“All opinions are valuable around the table and we all, singularly, don’t know everything,” said Leah Klassen, interim president of the Manitoba School Boards Association.

Klassen said it’s been wonderful to watch MSBA conferences become more diverse — and as a result, more representative of Manitoba’s population — since 2010, when she was first elected in Winkler’s Garden Valley School Division.

Newly elected trustee Motolani Lawson, a post-secondary instructor, is the first woman of colour to serve on the board.

The Western School Division board office, also based in the Pembina Valley, is marking a first as the 2026-30 term gets underway. The newest iteration of its board is made up entirely of women.

The majority of school board seats are held by women, said Alan Campbell, executive director of the MSBA.

When he was elected about 16 years ago, Campbell was an outlier in that he was a 25-year-old who didn’t have any children — just like Kolisniak.

“Those are the kinds of perspectives that, frankly, we need more of at the table,” said the former trustee who is now, as of the recent elections, a council member in Stonewall.

As she was preparing for polls to open in Winnipeg, Kolisniak said she regularly met constituents who informed her they didn’t pay attention to LRSD board politics because they didn’t have school-aged kids.

There were “baffled” reactions when she responded that she didn’t have any kids, either, she said.

“Just because I don’t have children on my own, just because it might not be as obvious in my day to day, how public education affects me, I still live in this community,” the aspiring lawyer said, recalling her pitch to skeptics.

“I still care deeply about the well-being of the children in our community — both for their own sake and because… it won’t be long before (current students) grow up and are in our workforce and are making our decisions and will be our doctors and our pilots and our teachers.”

Kolisniak grew up studying French immersion in LRSD before she enrolled in St. Mary’s Academy — a pivot she said was largely influenced by her family’s faith.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of Manitoba trustees who are tasked with making policies related to the use of technology in schools, she had an Instagram account by Grade 8. When Kolisniak was a high school student, she went to classes “with a cellphone in my pocket.”

The Kinew government issued a universal ban on smartphones during instructional times in kindergarten-to-Grade 12 classrooms ahead of the 2024-25 academic year.

Kolisniak heard about the rollout, among other timely topics in the sector, from a reliable source — her then-boss, Education Minister Tracy Schmidt.

She’s worked for several politicians since graduating from the University of British Columbia, where she took biochemistry and First Nations, Métis and Inuit studies.

Kolisniak staffed Liberal MP Terry Duguid’s local office before she became a constituency assistant for the NDP MLA for Rossmere, who was also a rookie education minister at the time.

She left the role this summer to mount a campaign to represent residents of Island Lakes, Royalwood and surrounding communities in LRSD.

“I grew up in a very political family,” said the rookie trustee who lives with her mom, who is a teacher, and 23-year-old brother, who has nonverbal autism.

One of the key pillars in Kolisniak’s platform was to advocate to ensure students with exceptional needs, including cognitive, developmental and learning disabilities, as well as newcomers who are learning in English, “have what they need.”

Manitoba Education’s philosopy on inclusion is well-meaning, but she said based on her brother’s experience,she knows not every child can be successful in a traditional classroom.

Kolisniak used her tech-savvy skills — she had managed Schmidt’s social media channels — to bolster her campaign this fall.

Combined, her curiosity and digital-native upbringing led her to research other young trustees who’ve come before her. That’s how she learned about Katherine Gloria Queen-Hughes (1909-78).

The Manitoba Historical Society records indicate Queen-Hughes, a journalist, feminist and community activist, was the first of her kind in several areas.

In addition to being the first woman to both work as a sports reporter at the Free Press and run for mayor (she lost to Stephen Juba), Queen-Hughes was the youngest woman elected to trustee in 1933.

Queen-Hughes was 24, one year younger than Kolisniak, when she became a trustee.

“On 24 November 1931, she married Wilfred Hughes, insisting that he take her surname if she was to take his,” researcher Gordon Goldsborough wrote in a summary of her life on the historical society’s website.

“Stepping into this role, I feel I need to be totally on top of my game to prove that young people can do this – that people like me can do this,” said Kolisniak, who has ADHD and identifies as queer.

She is anticipated to begin her graduate studies at the University of Manitoba next fall. Given she deferred her admission to law school, she said she is dedicating the next year to the learning curve related to becoming a trustee.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca