Concerned Parents of SD76 mull legal action over rejected petition

Concerned Parents of SD76 is considering legal action to challenge the school division’s interpretation that the group’s recently re-submitted petition was insufficient.

According to Concerned Parents spokesperson Gerry Prince, the group added or amended 397 signatures in its re-submitted petition, which took them well above the 2,000 required under the law. Four of those were rejected because they were technically outside the district’s boundaries. And while the school division has claimed there are more than 40 duplicate signatures, Prince feels only 19 of those rejected on this basis were actually duplicates. However, the major sore point for Concerned Parents is the bulk of the signatures rejected based on what, they feel, is an incorrect interpretation of the law on SD76’s part.

“We feel the rejection of the amended signatures really goes against the sentiments and perspective the judge has given us in court,” states Prince. “He said we could add the addresses which were missing for the signatures that only had postal codes ... The judge allowed us to amend those instances and add the addresses to them. The school board, apparently on the recommendation of its legal council, is suggesting we need to go and re-collect each of those signatures; which we think is very much violating the spirit of the judgment.”

Prince says he and other representatives of Concerned Parents intend to meet with SD76 on this matter again, and will decide what action to take based on those meetings.

“We’re pretty disappointed about it actually. We had several meetings with the board and felt we had found a lot of common ground through some of these issues. We still have a few areas we feel we need to make some points.

“From our perspective, we see the board not only as policymakers, but also as our representatives through to the provincial government,” adds Prince. “And for a variety of reasons, we still feel we have some issues we need to bring up with them. For them to reject this, we are pretty disappointed.”

SD76 has given Concerned Parents until July 21 to meet the criteria for acceptance of the group’s petition.