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Trustee Lynn Scott's Experience

Lynn Scott has been involved with public education in Ottawa-Carleton for more than 25 years, as a parent and as a school board member. Having first been elected to the former Carleton Board of Education in 1994, representing West Carleton, she was elected to the newly amalgamated Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in 1997, and has served the western rural area, now comprising the wards of West Carleton-March, Stittsville-Kanata West and Rideau-Goulbourn, since that time.

For the period December 2009 to November 2010, Lynn Scott is serving as chair of the Board's Education Committee. She is also a member of the Strategic Planning and Priorities Committee and chair of the Governance Review Task Force.  She is one of three trustee members of the Special Education Advisory Committee and sits, ex officio, as a member of the Trades and Technology Steering Committee.  In addition, she is a Director of the Ottawa Student Transportation Authority and currently vice-chair of that organization.

Lynn Scott has demonstrated leadership throughout the turbulent process of amalgamating two large school boards simultaneously with experiencing severe funding reductions, having served as the first Chair of the Board in 1998, presiding over two half-billion dollar balanced budgets, the selection of a new Director of Education, the introduction of eight new union groups, the development of the Board's guiding principles and the first decisions towards program harmonization and consolidation of school space. Since that time, she was again chosen as Chair of the Board in 2007-2008 and in 2008-2009, and has served as chair of most of the Board's committees at one time or another. 

Recognizing the importance of communications and partnerships, Lynn Scott has established and maintained good working relationships with the local MPPs who represent her constituents at Queen's Park. She tries to work cooperatively with city councillors on issues important to the rural west. As a trustee, she has been readily accessible to thousands of involved and concerned parents from Fitzroy Harbour to Burritts Rapids, meeting with school councils at the 14 schools located in her three city wards, and consulting on major issues such as budget, school programs and accommodation issues.

Within the budget allocated for the purpose, Lynn Scott takes advantage of professional development opportunities for trustees, to stay abreast of current education issues and research, sharing her findings with board members and staff in an on-going effort to ensure the highest quality of board decision-making.  She has also presented papers on education issues at national and international conferences, including conferences of the National School Boards Association in the United States and the Canadian Association for the Practical Study of Law in Education.

Lynn Scott's earliest involvement was with the former Ottawa Board of Education from 1981 to 1984, where she served on her local school's parent advisory committee and the OBE's Community Liaison Advisory Committee, and co-chaired an OBE Study Committee charged with reviewing elementary curriculum. As a result of this experience, she understands the challenges of ensuring adequate educational services and supports for the very diverse needs of Ottawa's urban population, and is very familiar with two decades of school closure and boundary review issues in the urban environment.

After moving to West Carleton in the mid-1980's, Lynn Scott soon became involved again with education issues, this time in the former Carleton Board of Education. Between 1988 and 1994, she served on parent/school associations successively at three different schools, and represented those groups on the board-wide Carleton Council of Parent/School Associations. She served as president of the Carleton Council of Parent/School Associations in 1989-90, 1990-91 and 1992-93, overseeing the growth of the organization from about 25 member schools to nearly 60 schools. Under her leadership, the Carleton Council successfully assisted the Board to find flexible ways to meet the needs of its many different rural and suburban school communities, while maintaining a strong central policy framework focused on high quality education.

Special education has been a subject of great interest to Lynn Scott for many years, and she was appointed as the Carleton Council's representative on the CBE's Special Education Advisory Committee in 1988, serving in that role for six years. She became the first non-trustee to chair the Special Education Advisory Committee in the CBE, and served as chair for three years from 1991 to 1994. As Chair of the SEAC, she and two Superintendents were appointed by the Board to form a Special Education Review Task Force, charged with developing recommendations for special education program delivery in Carleton. In 1994, Lynn Scott's contribution to special education in the CBE was acknowledged by the Carleton Board of Education with a Certificate of Recognition, an honour rarely awarded to a community volunteer.

Page last modified 15 August 2010
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