Candy Ashdown was elected to the Langley Board of Education on October 17, 2026, with 13,680 votes, fourth of the 15 candidates for the five Township seats, in the Township's official results declared on October 21, 2026. She had held one of the two Langley City seats; this time she ran in the Township. The Langley Advance Times reported that Langley Strong swept all five Township seats on the Board and won the mayor's chair and six of the eight council seats. The new Board's inaugural meeting is on November 3, 2026, by the District's meeting schedule.
The District's trustee page lists her as chair of the Board on October 30, 2026, and the Board's letter of June 4, 2025 to the Premier and three ministers carries her signature as chairperson. The Aldergrove Star reported in August 2022 that she had been a trustee from 2011 to 2014, lost her seat in 2014 and ran again in 2018; its 2018 results report gives her 1,805 votes, third of five for the City's two seats. In October 2022 the Star reported that she and Tony Ward were elected by acclamation in Langley City, and on December 29, 2023 it named her as the Board's chair. By her own account on the Langley Strong site, her fellow trustees elected her chair in November 2022, she chairs the Board's Policy Committee and represents the Board on ya:yestel, the Indigenous Education Council. The Star reported in 2022 that she was a second-generation trustee, her mother Diane Pona having served 12 years on the Board, and that she graduated from Langley schools and spent years as a parent advisory council president. In the Advance Times' candidate profile of October 8, 2026 she described her work as chair and trustee of the Board and as a constituency advisor at the Legislative Assembly of BC; that is her own account.
Langley Strong announced on August 24, 2026 that she would seek re-election with its team, joining Charlie Fox. The release says that in February 2025 the Township Council suspended the joint program under which the Township and the District had bought land together for schools and parks since the early 1990s, without consulting the Board; that is the organization's account, in her words, and voche.me has not read the Council's decision. The Advance Times reported on September 2 that Holly Dickinson joined her and Fox on the slate. In the organization's trustee platform release of September 19 she said the plan started with a reset, trustees and councillors pulling in the same direction, and in its release on Neil Turner she said he had kept attending Board meetings after losing in 2022. No report of a court matter names her.
On her page she writes that she wants the joint land program restored, with the Board and Township talking early and planning together; that families should be invited into decisions early enough to shape them, as the Board did this term when it opened its annual budget to public consultation; and that in four years residents should see the approved schools open, graduation gaps closing, and a record of what the Board promised and delivered. In the Advance Times' profile she wrote that she was running to advocate for new schools, support students and staff, listen to families and strengthen the partnership between the District and the Township.