Kathie Dalziel for Township Trustee

I didn’t plan on running for office. I planned on showing up for my kid’s school, and that kept leading me to bigger rooms where bigger decisions were being made. At some point you either keep asking someone else to be in the room, or you go yourself.

I’ve spent years advocating for kids and other families as a parent volunteer. Running for trustee is the next step: taking that same commitment and putting it to work for every student in this district, not only the ones at my daughter’s school.

My family has lived in Walnut Grove for eleven years. It’s where our daughter goes to school, where we know our neighbours, and where most of my volunteering has happened.

Walnut Grove has seen a lot of change, and so has the Township around it. Watching new families arrive and new neighbourhoods has made me think hard about what it takes for a school district to keep up, and about how easy it is for a parent to feel lost in a system that keeps getting bigger.

Five things I’ll push for at the Board table, all part of our Keep Langley Schools Strong platform:

• Strong Students. Every child deserves a fair shot, no matter what their family looks like or where they started, and the supports for students who need the most help.
• Strong Staff. Teachers, education assistants and support staff who feel valued, supported and able to build a career in Langley.
• Strong Schools & Spaces. Classrooms, sites and new schools planned ahead of growth, so families in new neighbourhoods aren’t left waiting.
• Strong Community. Parents with a clear line to the Board, PACs and DPAC treated as partners, and a Board that reflects the families it serves..
• Strong & Sustainable Funding. Careful guardianship of public dollars, and budgets explained in plain language before decisions are made.

I bring practical, lived experience. Nearly twenty years in the financial sector, which taught me how to read a budget and follow the money. Years as a parent volunteer, as Vice President of my daughter’s school PAC and as Secretary of the Langley District PAC. Five years on the board of the Lower Fraser Valley Aboriginal Society, where I serve today as Vice President.

I also work as a Medical Secretary at BC Cancer. Working in a public system, helping people during some of the hardest days of their lives, has sharpened my sense of what public accountability should look like: clear information, a straight answer, and follow-through.

That the distance between a parent and a decision can feel enormous. I’ve sat on PAC and DPAC boards for years, and I know what it’s like to bring a concern forward and wonder if it ever reaches the people making the decision. I want to be the person on the other end of that conversation.

It also taught me how much good work parent volunteers already do. PACs raise awareness, money, build community and carry concerns up the line on their own time. A Board that treats them as partners, not an audience, makes better decisions and gains more trust in return.

Numbers tell a story, and families deserve a trustee who can read that story and explain it back to them in plain language. That’s what I want to bring to the table.

A school district budget is mostly people and buildings, and every line lands on a classroom somewhere. My job would be to ask the practical questions: what this costs now, what it will cost to run in three years, and whether a parent could follow the reasoning without a background in finance.

A school board should look and sound like the community it serves. I want families who don’t always see themselves reflected at that table to know someone is listening.

My work as a parent advocate, along with the Lower Fraser Valley Aboriginal Society and my place in Langley’s Indigenous community shape how I think about representation. Representation isn’t only about who sits at the table. It’s about whether families believe their voices can reach it.

The district now serves about 27,600 students across 46 school sites. Since September 2024, it has opened or secured provincial approval for 5,030 new student spaces, representing roughly $514.5 million in provincial investment, including three new schools and a joint middle and secondary campus in Willoughby.

That’s real progress, and it has to keep pace. But growth also changes what it feels like to be a parent here. It can be hard for a family to know where to go with a question or a concern. I want to make sure that as this district gets bigger, it doesn’t get harder for parents to be heard.

Because I’ve already been doing the work from the parent side of the table. I know how a concern moves from a classroom to a PAC, from a PAC to DPAC, and from DPAC to the Board. I know where it tends to get stuck.

I bring a financial background that helps me read a budget, board work that has taught me governance, and a job in public healthcare that reminds me every day what accountability should feel like to the person on the receiving end. I’m not coming to this to learn how a school district works. I’m coming to make sure more families feel part of it.

Because I’ll be joining trustees who already know this district’s work, and a team that shares the things I care about most: guardianship of public dollars, decisions made in the open, and a steady focus on student success.

Working alongside people with shared commitments gets more done than working alone. What doesn’t change is my own voice. I’ll read every report, ask the practical question, and vote the way I believe serves our students and families.

Reach out to me. You won’t always get the answer you were hoping for, but you deserve a real one, and you deserve the reasoning behind it.

Parents are asking to be taken seriously and to know where their concern went. That’s a reasonable thing to ask of a school board, and it’s the standard I’ll hold myself to.

Family first. Most of my time outside work goes to my husband and daughter, and to building community.

Beading is also a big part of my life. It keeps me grounded, and it keeps me connected to a community of women I learn from every week. That sense of community, where everyone brings something and everyone is heard, is exactly what I want to bring to the Board.

Ask the families. The measure is whether more parents know where to go with a question, whether students who need help are getting it, and whether the children in our newest neighbourhoods are learning in schools that are ready for them.

Every kid in this district deserves a fair shot, no matter what their family looks like or where they started. That belief is why I’m running, and it’s how I’d want the next four years to be judged.