b'ManitobaUpdate2023-2024 Annual Report to the CSBA Board of Directors As always, this past year brought exciting opportunities and challenges for the Manitoba School Boards Association and its member school boards, with several major highlights of note:Provincial General ElectionManitoba held a provincial general election (October 3, 2023) resulted in aMike Deal/Winnipeg Free Pressmajority win for the Manitoba NDP party, with 34 out of 57 seats. In the final analysis, they received a total of 45.5% of the vote share compared to 42.1% for the Progressive Conservative party and 10.6% for all other parties. Newly elected Premier Wab Kinew was styled as Canadas first, First Nations Premier. The new Cabinet included, as the Minister of Education, Nello Altomare (former Opposition Critic for Education) as well as new Deputy Minister, Brian OLeary, who formerly served as superintendent of the Seven Oaks School Division located in North Winnipeg.Ahead of the election, our association in partnership with the other public education partners hosted a party debate forum on education, which reached over 112,000 voters via social media channels a very high level of engagement. New Manitoba Premier, Wab Kinew and NDP CabinetAdditionally, at start of summer 2023, we launched www.election2023.ca to showcase our members main priorities for the election, along with other information of interest to citizens leading up to E-Day. From a lawn sign campaign in major metro regions of Manitoba, to radio spots and newspaper ads, brochures and digital campaigns, we left no channel untouched to raise awareness of issues around education funding, supports, program and staffing for the consideration of our electorate. MSBAs Local Voices, Local Choices slogan was prominent in the run up to the election!Fall PD Day and General MeetingFrom November 23-24 2023, MSBA held a solid day of professional development on themes related to everything from governing in divisive times to communications during times of crisis, the human side of the employer role, and an entire half day devoted to showcasing and reviewing the Manitoba chapter that was included in Local voice in decision making at the school system level across Canada, the report prepared by Dr. Katina Pollock along with Ruth Nielsen from the University of Western Ontario for CSBA. The round table discussions were certainly engaging and throughout the entire presentation, Dr. Pollock and Ruth held our audiences full and undivided attention. Our thanks to CSBA for investing in the preparation of this important study, as this certainly does help members to share important perspectives and insights at the local level. During the second day, which was the general business meeting of the fall session, the association broke out into regional meetings for the purposes of vetting draft resolutions in time for the Associations Spring Convention, while also having the opportunity to welcome newly minted Minister of Education Nello Altomare and new Deputy Minister OLeary to a Question and Answer session with our members regarding the new governments priorities and directions for K-12 education over the next four years.Minister of Education, Deputy Minister,Nello Altomare BrianOLeary'