Vancouver school trustees created toxic workplace for staff: report

Vancouver School Board trustees contributed to a toxic work environment in which staff were bullied, harassed and feared for their job security, an external investigation has found.

An executive summary of the report was released Friday, just over four months after the British Columbia School Superintendents Association filed a complaint about the treatment of staff at the board.

“Today is not an easy day,” official trustee Dianne Turner said at a news conference. “I find it deeply troubling that we are speaking about bullying and harassment at the Vancouver School Board. Every day we talk to our students about how bullying is unacceptable.”

By the time the probe began in October, the board’s secretarytreasurer, superintendent and entire senior management team were on indefinite leave.

Education Minister Mike Bernier fired the school board’s nine elected trustees days later, on Oct. 17, for failing to pass a balanced budget and replaced them with Turner, a former school district superintendent in nearby Delta.

The full report by lawyer Roslyn Goldner was not made public. Interim secretary-treasurer Guy Bonnefoy said the board expects to receive freedom of information requests and is preparing a redacted copy to be released in response.

Turner said she was deeply distressed by Goldner’s findings.

“It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to read,” she said. “I became quite emotional having to read about the incidents described in the report.”

The summary, which does not include names or specific incidents, said members of the board routinely engaged in conduct with one another that was “uncivil, disrespectful and rude.”

Members of the senior management team also faced direct bullying and personal harassment, creating a “culture of fear” in which they felt their job security was at risk, the summary said.

Of particular significance, the summary said, was the behaviour of certain trustees in relation to plans to close 11 schools in the district. By September 2016, it was untenable for some senior managers to remain in the workplace, it said.

“I find the allegations that certain trustees ‘threw the staff under the bus’ an apt descriptor of the trustees’ conduct,” Goldner said in the summary.