UGDSB announces successful candidates placed in Superintendent of Education pool
November 23, 2021
The Upper Grand District School Board is pleased to announce the successful candidates that have been placed in the board’s Superintendent of Education pool.
This fall, the board put out a call for dynamic leaders with diverse lived experiences who are interested in assuming the role of Superintendent of Education. The purpose of the Superintendent of Education pool is to ensure a strong group of candidates are available to meet the future needs of Senior Administration of the board.
After a fantastic response from interested applicants both internal and external to the UGDSB, and a rigorous application and interview process, the following three candidates have been selected for placement in the pool: Wendy Donaldson, Adnan Shahbaz, and Belal Taha.
Wendy Donaldson
Wendy Donaldson currently serves as the UGDSB’s Assistant to the Superintendent of Program Services, with primary responsibilities for Special Education, Kindergarten to Grade 12. Donaldson has also held the roles of Principal, Vice-Principal and Teacher. Examples of Donaldson’s leadership include leading and facilitating staff professional learning and community collaboration in special education, leading the development and implementation of the UGDSB’s Student-Centred Instructional Tool in order to develop and align staff practice to support students who are struggling to access learning, and supporting school administration by facilitating collaborative case conferences between school and community partners, focused on supporting creative and aligned approaches to support students to return to school safely.
Adnan Shahbaz
Adnan Shahbaz currently works in the Peel District School Board as a Principal and has also held the roles of Vice-Principal, Instructional Coach and Teacher.
Examples of Shahbaz’s leadership includes reculturing the special education and support model focusing on critically assessing student support models with an anti-racist lens and on integrating students from Special Education Contained Classes, implementing a 5-year school-level anti-racism strategy that incorporated many stakeholders and outside supports to help reculture the school environment, and collaborating with stakeholders to develop shared visions and high expectations regarding equity, instruction and assessment.
Belal Taha
Belal Taha currently serves in the York Region District School Board as a Principal. Taha has also held the roles of Vice-Principal and Teacher in two large Ontario School Boards. In 2017, Taha was recognized as one of Canada’s Outstanding Principals by The Learning Partnership. Some work that Taha has been actively involved in includes supporting board-hosted community consultations to engage and amplify voices from marginalized communities, delivering staff and parent/guardian learning around anti-racism and anti-oppression, and pioneering and instructing the first ever Math Additional Qualifications Course for administrators while supporting administrators in the development of their school improvement plans for mathematics.
Congratulations to the successful candidates and a sincere thank you to all those who applied.
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