Dawn Lang has been elected chair of School District 8’s board of education in her 12th year as a trustee.
Lang was elected by acclamation at the board’s meeting Nov. 14, and will replace Lenora Trenaman who had previously served as chair for nine years.
Chairs and vice chairs are elected annually by the board. Lang served the last year as vice chair and takes on the new position after Trenaman decided to step down from the board leadership role.
“I’m really grateful for her leadership in just creating with the board a really solid foundation for us to move forward in terms of our strategic plan and our policy development,” said Lang. “It’s really solid, and she’s been leading the board through that role.”
The board’s new chair has a long history in local education.
Lang worked for 20 years in various support roles at Jewett Elementary in Meadow Creek and Kaslo’s J.V. Humphries Elementary-Secondary. She also previously worked at Selkirk College where she led employability training programs.
Lang was first acclaimed as a trustee in 2011 and has also been a director for the Kootenay-Boundary region with the BC Public School Employers’ Association since 2019.
She said she plans to focus on communications and relationship building as chair, which she prioritized as vice chair.
“I think that those two pieces are so important for us to figure out on so many levels so that we’re functioning well as a board, so that we’re engaging with our partner groups, so that we’re serving the students in the very best way we can, so that we’re working with our senior team. All of those pieces are about communication and relationships.”
Julie Bremner was also appointed vice-chair. Bremner is a trustee for the City of Nelson and Bealby Point in her first term after being elected in 2022.
Lang said she thinks Bremner is a perfect fit for the role.
“She’s well-steeped in academia, and brings a real ability to see things conceptually and then also through to execution. So that’s pretty critical in a vice-chair role.”
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