Catholic School Board Elects Chair and Vice-Chair

At the Annual Organizational Meeting of the Niagara Catholic District School Board, Dan Whipple was re-elected as Chairperson and John Belcastro was elected as Vice-Chairperson for the coming year. Mr. Whipple has served as the Board’s Chairperson for the past 3 years and prior to that as Vice-Chairperson. Mr. Belcastro will be serving on the Board’s executive for the first time, since he became a trustee in 2002.

In his comments to the Board, after being re-elected, Mr. Whipple thanked the trustees for their support and welcomed Mr. Belcastro as the Board’s new Vice-Chairperson. He said that Mr. Belcastro’s name is synonymous with Catholic education in the community. He also thanked former Vice-Chairperson, John Dekker for his years of service on the Board’s executive. Mr. Whipple challenged the Niagara Catholic community to make the system “even better”. “We have a mandate to work with our children to improve literacy and numeracy skills, but always remember that we as Catholic educators have an even greater mandate, and that is to live and show by example, the living word of Christ to our students”, said Mr. Whipple.

Vice-Chairperson, John Belcastro thanked the trustees for their support and pledged to work diligently for the students of Niagara Catholic. “In this period of education peace in the province and contract peace in our Board, it seems like the ideal time to become especially focused on the reason for our existence as a Catholic school system … our responsibilities as Catholic school trustees are to be advocates, guardians and stewards of Catholic education”, said Mr. Belcastro.

His Excellence, Bishop James Wingle, who was present at the meeting, said, “the onus is on us to be intentional and clear about our identity as Catholic system.” He stressed the need for on-going faith development for Niagara Catholic teachers.

Angelo Di Ianni, Director of Education congratulated Mr. Whipple and Mr. Belcastro. He said, "Both gentlemen have provided exceptional leadership to our Board. I look forward to working with them. We are very fortunate to have leaders of their calibre and we will continue to support them in their roles as Chair and Vice-Chair of Niagara Catholic."