Recently elected to lead School District #53  is Marieze Tarr of Osoyoos as Chair of the Board.

A mother of school aged children, a medical scientist by training and wife of a Dr. Garnett Tarr, Marieze hails from South Africa. She has lived in Canada for over twenty years in both Saskatchewan and BC and was elected to the board four times as the representative of the Osoyoos area.

Tarr says she wants to bring communications with the public to the forefront and at an upcoming January retreat will urge trustees to engage parents, administrators and the public in discussions about what can be accomplished locally in education. She says the governance of the School Board needs to be looked at and a new committee structure will be reviewed again so that more work can get done in a school district that is so spread out from Hedley  to OK Falls to Osoyoos.

Marieze Tarr says there have been a number of issues like school closures that have come up and she has been quick to consult with all parties so that a controversial subject is debated with the facts on the table. She says she likes transparency in governance and hopes to open up all meetings except land, labour and legal. She says a number of trustees are passionate about getting the word out. Tarr says she will sponsor the idea of meeting with each community in the District once a year with issues dear to them. She says that a restorative justice process could be introduced for disciplinary matters and she hopes to continue working on that idea.