In the Western School District region only 12 per cent of voters showed up to cast ballots in the 2009 School Board Elections.
As far as turnout goes, Western was the overachiever this year.
| District | Turnout |
| Eastern | 1.9 |
| Central | 6.5% |
| Western | 12% |
| Labrador | 6% |
Elections were held in four school districts - Eastern, Nova Central, Western and Labrador - with each board having 15 trustee positions.
"For the 2009 school board elections we did set out to create more awareness of the school board elections by changing the date to later in the school year and investing in a communications and advertising strategy," Shortall said.
"While I believe the awareness was raised, we just did not see the results for voter turnout election day that we wanted to realize.
"There could be any number of reasons for that. The challenge ahead is to find out how we can make changes in the future so that we do have a better level of public engagement in our school board elections."
