School District 46 · Trustee Area 3Gibsons · Roberts Creek · Elphinstone · West Howe Sound
BAILEYMark
School Trustee
About Mark
I live in Roberts Creek, and I have spent most of my adult life in rooms where public decisions get made.
Sixteen years of it was at a school board table in Guelph, Ontario, four elections and five years as chair. The rest has been the ordinary volunteer work of the places I have lived: a residents’ association, a solar co-operative, a community association, a community plan.
I own Linwood House, a retreat centre in Roberts Creek, and a small digital marketing business. Both of my sons went through SD46 and graduated from Elphinstone.
On the Coast
Where I serve now
- Roberts Creek
Chair, Roberts Creek Official Community Plan Committee
The Official Community Plan sets what gets built in Roberts Creek, what gets protected, and how the two are balanced. I chair the committee renewing it, which means running a public process and making sure what residents actually say reaches the regional district board rather than being summarised away.
- Sunshine Coast Regional District
Alternate Director, Electoral Area D
I step in for our area’s director at the SCRD board when needed. That is the table where water, waste, parks, fire protection and land use get decided for Roberts Creek.
- Roberts Creek
Vice President, xwesam-Roberts Creek Community Association
The association that looks after the hall and much of what happens in the Creek. It is the organisation that renamed itself to honour the shíshálh placename for this place.
- Sunshine Coast
Performer, Coast Improv
I get on stage with Coast Improv. It is the least serious thing on this page and the best listening practice I have ever found. You cannot do improv while you are waiting for your turn to talk.
Before the Coast
Guelph, Ontario
- Upper Grand District School Board
School trustee, sixteen years. Board chair, five.
Elected four times to a half-urban, half-rural board. I pushed hardest on mental health supports, on the connection between schools and the communities around them, and on making sure technology served teaching rather than the other way round. Chairing a board is not a bigger vote. It is the job of running a meeting so a decision actually gets made and everyone knows why.
- Ontario Public School Boards’ Association
Vice President, six years
OPSBA represents Ontario’s English public boards to the province. Six years on its executive is six years of arguing the case for public education to the people who write the funding formula.
- Provincial bargaining
Negotiating team member, OSSTF central bargaining
I sat on the OPSBA team that negotiated the provincial collective agreement with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. Central bargaining is where class size, staffing and working conditions in every secondary school in the province get settled. It is slow, technical work, and it taught me more about how a school system actually runs than anything else I have done.
- Guelph
Founder and past President, Guelph Solar Community Co-operative
A community-owned co-operative I started so ordinary residents could invest in local rooftop solar and keep the returns in town rather than sending them somewhere else.
- Guelph
Past President, Old University Neighbourhood Residents’ Association
The residents’ association for the neighbourhood I lived in. Planning applications, traffic, trees, and the ordinary work of getting a city to listen to the people who live in a place.
On top of Mount Elphinstone with Hjördes, Julian and Jack
At home
Roberts Creek
My wife lives with severe ME/CFS. I have been her caregiver for three and a half years. It has taught me, in a way nothing else could have, what post-viral illness does to a life, and how easily people living with it become invisible to institutions. A good many families on the Coast are managing something similar, including families with a child who has not been able to get back to school the way they were before. I understand that from the inside now, and I do not intend to forget it.
We have two boys, both Elphinstone graduates. One is at UBC. The other finished at Elphi this year and is starting a yard maintenance business here on the Coast, which is exactly the outcome I want our schools to make possible: a kid who can build a life in the place he grew up.
I run Linwood House, a retreat centre on five forested acres in Roberts Creek, and a small digital marketing business. When I am not working I am meditating, doing yoga, hiking, out on the boat, or sitting at a beach fire, which is the Coast’s own contribution to civic life.
Get in touch
Questions, concerns or ideas about our schools?
I’d like to hear from you. I stopped knocking on doors a few elections ago, because I found it bothers as many people as it wins over. So call me or send me an email instead. Ask me anything.
- Phone
- 604-998-8039
- mark@markbailey.ca