EAST CENTRAL — Stacy Lair, the North East School Division’s (NESD’s) superintendent of student services has been promoted to the director of education, following the planned retirement of Don Rempel.
Graduating with her master’s degree in educational leadership and administration in 2008, Lair started as principal at Creighton School Division in 2013. In 2015, she moved to the NESD where she became vice-principal at Tisdale Elementary, and following that she became the Division’s superintendent of student services in 2018.
As superintendent of student services, Lair was responsible for supporting curriculum assessment for Grade 4-12, First Nations and Métis achievement, oversight over IT, digital and online learning supports, career and guidance work, admin counsel, drivers education, home school, and teacher accreditation and teacher supervision.
“I’m driven to contribute in a way that makes things better for our staff and our students and help as much as I can to support student learning,” Lair said. “From the superintendent role to the director role allowed a little bit more of that contribution and commitment to help support our student and staff.”
Rempel, the NESD’s previous director of education, planned for a retirement at the end of the 2020-21 academic year, but delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic until March, 2022.
Lair said she had a significant advantage to transitioning from superintendent of school services, as she had the opportunity to work closely with Rempel while he served as director.
“He very much believed in shared leadership, and so there’s not really any surprises I don’t think in this role because the way he operated was really to empower the people around him through the shared leadership perspective.”
As director, Lair said she will be helping to sustain curriculum instructions and assessment, and contributing to innovation.
“One of the biggest differences is my involvement with the board, and seeing the role in the school division— an employee of the board to serve them and inform them of what’s going on in the school division so that they can best support and make decisions and policies to guide the school Division.”
