TDSB incumbents were hit-and-miss with Scarborough voters

Scarborough kept one familiar face and banished another in the Oct. 25 TDSB trustee elections.

The biggest upset of the night was in Ward 19 (Scarborough Centre) where David Smith beat incumbent Scott Harrison by a substantial 3,289 votes.

“I’m disappointed, of course,” Harrison said. “But the reality is that I was fighting a battle against corporate and union sponsorship.”

Harrison attributes Smith’s win to a larger budget and says he’s worried about the future of certain projects he was working on during his term on the board.

“If I read what he says in his platform and everything else, they will probably try to overturn some of the decisions the board made to move forward on school consolidation and/or closure in Ward 19,” Harrison said.

Smith was unavailable for comment.

It was a different story in Ward 21 (Scarborough-Rouge River) however, where incumbent Shaun Chen claimed his position on the board.

Chen said he was concerned with the number of challengers he had at the beginning of the campaign, but thinks it was his hard work that won him 45 per cent of the votes.

“I’ve worked hard over the last four years and I’ve brought some incredible changes across Scarborough-Rouge River,” Chen said. “I think that the voters really responded to that.”

Shaun Chen says he will continue working toward closing gaps in achievement between certain groups of students..

[audio:http://torontoobserver.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Shaun-Chen.mp3]

Over the next four years, Chen says he wants to tackle the dropout rate in his ward, as well as improve service to special education and ESL students.

And in a candidate pool of all new faces, Jerry Chadwick reigned victorious over his six competitors for Ward 22 (Scarborough East).

“I’ve been an educator for 33 years and that was really the thing I heard going door-to-door that really made a difference,” Chadwick said. “They wanted someone who knew how the system works.”

He added that the school board is going through a lot of changes with school and park closures, as well as consolidations — issues he will work on in his ward.

Chadwick had 31 per cent of the votes while his closest competitor, Ashwin Balamohan, was 10 per cent behind.

About this article

By: Kimberlee Nancekivell
Posted: Oct 28 2010 6:23 am
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Filed under: News Toronto Votes 2010
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