Like most 18 year olds, Isabella Preite’s life is awash with prognosticating the future and goal setting. What’s unique, however, is the level of detail and audacity the Kitsilano secondary student attaches to her future plans.
“Watch for Isabella Preite to be Prime Minister in 2032,” she told the Courier matter-of-factly in a recent phone interview.
Before ascending to the country’s top job, Preite has other matters to attend to first — high school graduation, settling on a post-secondary institution and focusing her future studies in political science. There’s also the issue of trying to wade through the complexities found in her post as the Vancouver School Board’s student trustee. Once meetings resume Nov. 21, it will be just her and newly appointed official trustee Dianne Turner at the table, along with some senior staff.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen because it’s a new system,” said Preite, who isn’t affiliated with any political party. “It’s going to be completely different.”
The school board maintains Preite’s role won’t change moving forward: she can attend all public meetings and take part in debates to reflect students’ sentiments from across the city. She doesn’t, however, have any voting power.
“The role of the student trustee is also about reporting back to students on the activities of the board,” Turner said in an email to the Courier. “I will have some tough decisions to make and I will be looking to Isabella to help me in communicating to the student community the reasons why I needed to make those decisions.”
Preite has met with Turner twice since the former Delta superintendent assumed the board’s top job in early October. Preite was assured that her role is an important one and won’t change moving forward.
“[Turner] is a very nice woman,” Preite said. “But I’m here to do my job as student trustee and I’m focusing on my task at hand, which is to make sure that she is aware of everything to do with students.”
Preite was elected in June, weeks before trustees failed to pass a balanced budget before the provincially mandated June 30 deadline. School was then out for the summer and she returned to see a mass firing of the board in October.
It was a whirlwind introduction to life in public office.
“The day the board was dismissed, it was a shock — I didn’t expect it whatsoever,” she said. “I didn’t go into this knowing that there would be this much change.”
Preite maintains she saw little in the way of divisiveness, bullying or ill will in her limited time around the ousted trustees.
“I just saw professionalism, I didn’t see anything personal,” she said. “I do think there is tension between the different sides. They’re very passionate about what they were discussing.”
Preite’s Twitter profile reflected frustration with the firing, but she maintains those sentiments were a reflection of the student body she represents, rather than her own. She also suggests there is a growing movement among Vancouver students who want a byelection held to restore the nine trustee positions, a move Education Minister Mike Bernier said won’t happen within the next year.
Political jockeying aside, she’s most looking forward to returning to the board table in a week’s time. “Everything that’s happened has made it an even more interesting journey for me in this role,” she said. “My job is to bring forward the student perspective. My role will continue, and there are no regrets for me.”
jkurucz@vancourier.com
@JohnKurucz
