Greater Sudbury Municipal & School Board Election · 2026
Vote
Tina Carroll
For Rainbow District School Board Trustee
Area 3, Ward 5 & 6
Students, teachers, EAs, bus drivers, parents. The people who spend every day inside our schools are usually the last ones asked. I want to change who gets listened to.
Every Student, Every Voice, Every Opportunity
About
Who I am
Born in Valley East, raised in these schools, still here.
My name is Tina Carroll. I'm a married mother of four, I grew up in Valley East, and I'm raising my family here.
I went through the public school system in this community myself, taught by some of the most caring educators I could have asked for. When we had children of our own, we moved our little family to Garson and raised them in the Rainbow District School Board. Between the specialized programs and the people running them, it was the best decision I could have made for my kids. In 2018 we came back to the Valley, to Hanmer.
My career as a personal support worker came to an unfortunate end. It's also what brought me into politics. Years of caring for people who couldn't always speak for themselves taught me what happens when nobody speaks up, and how much one strong voice in the right room can change. That's why I'm running.
You may know my family already without knowing my name. For seven years we've put on a Halloween display in our yard on St. Michel Street called Arachna Manor. It draws a crowd every October, young and old, and hands out plenty of smiles and a few good scares. For the past year and a half I've volunteered with the Valley East Community Action Network (VECAN), a non-profit that puts on free family events across the Valley. Both come from the same place: this community deserves things that bring people together and cost them nothing.
I've spent my working life supporting people who needed it, and my spare time building something my neighbours can enjoy for free. Running for trustee is that same instinct, pointed where it matters most. Our children are the future, and the decisions being made about their classrooms right now deserve someone at that table willing to ask the hard questions out loud.
Arachna Manor
Seven years on St. Michel Street. Free, every October, for anyone who wants to come by.
How I'll work
Three commitments, and you can hold me to all of them:
- Open hoursAbout twice a month I'll be somewhere public in the Valley, at a rink lobby, a library or a coffee shop, for anyone who wants to talk. No appointment, no agenda.
- My recordI'll tell you how I voted and why, including the times I lose. If I ever change my position on something, you'll hear the reason from me first.
- Every messageEmail, phone, or a message on the way out of a school concert. Every one gets an answer, not a form letter.
Area 3 covers Ward 5 & 6
- Val Caron
- Blezard Valley
- Cambrian Heights
- McCrea Heights
- Guilletville
- Nickeldale
- Notre Dame
- Val Thérèse
- Hanmer
Confirm the exact Area 3 boundary with the Rainbow District School Board.
Where I stand
Three things
I'll work on
A trustee sets policy and budget direction for the board, and carries the community's concerns into the room where the decisions actually get made.
My Priorities for a Stronger Educational System
More supports for students
Ask any teacher in the Valley what they need and you'll get the same answer before you finish the question: more hands in the room. Educational assistants stretched across too many kids. Waits for a psych assessment that run into years, so a child who needed help in grade two gets it in grade five. Mental health workers who cover more schools than one person can cover.
A trustee doesn't hire staff. But a trustee votes on the budget that decides where the board's money lands, and votes on the Special Education Plan that sets how those supports are handed out. I'll push for that money to go to the classroom before it goes anywhere else, and I'll say plainly, in public, when the province isn't sending enough of it.
Smaller classroom sizes
I'm going to be straight with you about this one, because you'll hear other people promise it without the fine print. Class size caps are set by the province and by collective agreements. No trustee can vote them down on their own.
What a board does control is how it staffs the schools it has, and whether it consolidates classes to save money. Those decisions get made at the board table, and they're the ones that quietly push a class from 24 to 31. I'll vote against the quiet ones, and I'll be loud with the Ministry about the funding underneath them. Real advocacy is showing up with the numbers every year, not once in October.
Safer schools for all
Safe means more than one thing. It means a kid isn't getting hurt at recess, and it means staff aren't absorbing violence as part of the job and quietly not reporting it. It means buildings where the roof and the ventilation work. It means bus routes that don't leave a seven-year-old standing on a rural road in the dark. And it means a child who is different, for any reason at all, walks in the door and belongs there.
Safe Schools policy, the transportation contract, and the capital repair list are all board decisions. I'll treat them that way, and I'll ask for the incident numbers in public rather than in a closed session.
The part that doesn't fit on a lawn sign
What's really wrong,
and what a trustee can do
Most people can't name their school board trustee. That isn't a failure of the people. It is the design. The job sits at the bottom of a long ballot, gets almost no coverage, and comes with a title that sounds like paperwork. So it draws no scrutiny, and a job with no scrutiny drifts.
That's the first problem, and it's the one you can fix on October 26. But it isn't the deepest one.
The deeper problem is distance. Rainbow District School Board covers an enormous territory, and the decisions get made in one room. Most of the money and most of the rules come from Queen's Park. Boards can't run a deficit and don't set the funding. So by the time a decision reaches the board table, it often looks less like a choice and more like arithmetic someone else already did. Then it gets announced. Families in Hanmer or Val Caron or Blezard Valley find out a program is gone, a route changed, a class merged. Always after.
The problem isn't usually that nobody cared. It's that nobody asked, and by the time you heard, it was already a decision instead of a question.
That distance is where trust goes. And once it's gone, every future decision, even a good one, gets read as something being done to you rather than with you.
A trustee can't fix provincial funding. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. But a trustee holds four real levers, and they matter more than people think: the vote on where the board's own budget goes, the vote on board policy, the hiring and annual review of the Director of Education, and the ability to force a conversation into public view before it's settled instead of after.
That last one is the whole job, in my view. Not being the loudest voice at the table. It is being the one who makes sure the people from Ward 5 and Ward 6 get asked first, while it's still a question.
The trustee section sits near the bottom of the ballot. It's the part most people scroll past. Try it.
How to vote
Four dates,
that's it
Greater Sudbury uses a hybrid model in 2026. Vote online from anywhere, or on paper in person.
Online voting opens
Cast an electronic ballot from your phone, tablet, or computer, any time of day. Voter Information Letters go out in late September with what you need to log in.
Advance voting day
Prefer paper? Vote in person at a designated advance location.
Second advance day
The last in-person option before election day.
Election day
Vote in person at any designated voting location, or finish your online ballot before 8 p.m. Online voting closes the same moment the polls do.
In their words
As a colleague of Tina's, I am continually amazed by her ambition, her selflessness, and the way she shows up for this community, especially for the people in it who are most easily overlooked.
I have watched her, more than once, advocate for someone else's rights and actually change the outcome. That drive doesn't switch off when the job title changes. It's who she is, and it's exactly what she would bring to a seat on the school board.
Tina is trustworthy and she is compassionate. She is also a mother, which means she has seen this school system first-hand at every grade level, not from a distance.
Put that together with her professional experience and the choice is an easy one. Tina Carroll will stand up for our kids and speak up for their futures.
Jenny Fortin, colleague and mother of twin toddlers
Get involved
Small campaign.
Real help.
Trustee races are decided by a few hundred votes. An hour, a lawn, a conversation. It all moves the number.
Volunteer
Door-knocking, phone calls, or an hour at a community event. No experience needed.
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