Incumbent Sauvé-Frankel hopes to hold onto Westmount seat

Sauvé-Frankel, a marketing and communications specialist, prides herself on having helped implement a pilot project in several EMSB schools — including Roslyn School in Westmount — designed to encourage empathy in young students. "It's a very good program because it builds empathy within the classroom," she said told the Examiner.

"It's built on the kids observing a baby growing through the school year and relating to that baby, but also relating to what they went through when they grew up. It starts to give them a commonality inside the classroom. So the dynamics change and the kids' capacity to learn actually increases."

Although the empathy program has existed in schools outside Quebec for the past decade, Sauvé-Frankel said it has only recently been available here. "Last year, the first year, we had three classrooms at Roslyn School and three classrooms at Westmount Park School," she said.

While pointing out that the 2007 school board elections have drawn more interest than there has been in years, Frankel-Sauvé also noted that the election has prompted many first-time aspirants as well as incumbents to form candidates' slates. "There's a lot of candidates running," she said, adding that her rival for the Ward 7 seat, Nick Primiano, is running on an "unofficial" slate.

"It's not a declared slate. He's running with a whole group of them who are running across the board." She said Dominic Spiridigliozzi, who was the EMSB's chairman for the past four years, is leading that slate. She decided not to join them, having had some differences with the Spiridigliozzi group during the last term.

"I'm part of a group that wants very much to have transparency and timely information and wants to be able to do things according to policies," she added. "Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the other group. Because one of the first things that they did when they had the very slim majority of one was to hire someone without following board policy and that did not sit well."

Although Sauvé-Frankel's campaign leaflet suggests that she, too, is running with a slate, she maintained that "we're not running a slate … Sometimes we all come together on some issues and sometimes we don't come together on issues. It depends on what the issues are and how we see things. We try to do things by consensus and by not imposing the will of one person."