Elections
Public Notice: School Trustee Election 2026
The Board of Education of School District 36 is compromised of six trustees elected from the City of Surrey and one trustee elected from the City of White Rock. Elected trustees are responsible for setting the district's educational goals and priorities, approving budgets that reflect those priorities, establishing policy, planning for the district's future and keeping the community informed on educational matters.
Trustees are elected under the to make decisions on public education on behalf of the residents of Surrey and White Rock. Importantly, trustees govern as a collective: decisions are debated and voted on at board meetings, and no individual trustee, committee or chairperson can act on the board's behalf alone. Day-to-day operations of the district are managed by professional staff under the leadership of the superintendent, while the board focuses on governance and strategic direction.
Ahead of the 2026 General School Election, 91精选 will host an information session for community members considering a run for school trustee. The one-hour session takes place on Tuesday, September 1 at 7 p.m. at the district’s Resource and Education Center (Room 205) at 14123 92nd Ave., Surrey, B.C.
The Notice of Nomination for the office of school trustees for the Surrey School District can be found at these links:
City of Surrey:
City of White Rock:
Looking for School Board Trustee Election Information?
Check out the Government of British Columbia website for guidance and videos at:
What is a school trustee?
School trustees are ordinary citizens elected by other citizens to represent the interest of the entire public in the education process of creating our next generation of citizens to strengthen Canadian democracy.
Locally elected school trustees, who make up boards of education in British Columbia, represent a unique form of democratic governance. Unlike municipal councils, provincial legislative assemblies and the federal parliament, boards of education have one primary mandate: improving learning for all students.
All board decisions, policies, regulations and actions must support the vision of improving learning outcomes for all students so that the most important objective of student learning can be achieved, which is to create citizens. More specifically, these student citizens must be capable of achieving their full potential and achieving their civic responsibility to give their informed consent to be governed in our Canadian democracy. Responsibility for continuously building this foundation of our society is given to boards of education.
How do school trustees do this? In a co-governance partnership with the provincial government’s Ministry of Education and Child Care, trustees serve to represent the needs of their communities in public education using tools granted to their board by provincial legislation. Defining those needs requires locally elected school trustees to learn and listen to citizens who voted for them, as well as those who voted against them or not at all. Once elected to a board, trustees must commit themselves to learning about the interests and views of students, parents, school district management, teachers and public education agencies such as francophone and First Nation authorities.
