School board aftermath
Voters shunned most Lower Mainland school board hopefuls who came out against new learning resources intended to familiarize students with LGBTQ people.
A fraction of the candidates who were opposed to the province’s move to include SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) in its new curriculum drew enough support to earn turns as trustees, with dozens of would-be antiSOGI trustees shown the door by voters in their respective cities.
The Education Ministry doesn’t require school boards to approve its so-called SOGI 123, but dissenting districts would have to choose some other similar learning resources to help teachers with the new curriculum.
While Chilliwack’s school board could be considered the least LGBTQ-friendly of all those in the region, even its anti-SOGI candidates will be outnumbered by trustees who didn’t express concerns about the provincial resources. Barry Neufeld, Darrell Furgason and Heather Maahs were the only candidates critical of, or staunchly against, the materials who won seats on that city’s school board. Another two anti-SOGI hopefuls narrowly missed their bids in Chilliwack.
During Neufeld’s last term as trustee, he faced a human rights complaint by the B.C. Teachers Federation and calls for his resignation from B.C.’s education minister and others after he criticized the SOGI program, saying that allowing young children to choose their gender amounted to “child abuse.”
Last week, Neufeld urged parents to vote with their children’s health in mind. “It doesn’t take long for this evil ideology to affect our children’s minds. And, of course, there are other concerning issues in the school district as well. But our children’s mental health is the most important,” he wrote on Facebook.
Neufeld gathered the second most votes among all trustee hopefuls in Chilliwack.
In Burnaby, Laura-Lynn Thompson, who recently insisted “gender fluid ideology has no place in our schools” and who called SOGI materials “crazy teaching,” received the third fewest votes of all trustee hopefuls. The fewest votes went to Jimmy Zhao, who, according to the Burnaby Now, recently responded to a question about mental health by expressing concern about SOGI 123.
Abbotsford’s Korky Neufeld and Phil Anderson were among the roughly half-dozen antiSOGI candidates voted onto school boards in the region. Korky took home more votes than any other trustee-elect, while Anderson made the cut on that city’s board by several hundred votes.
Just a single anti-SOGI candidate, Richard Lee, made it onto the board in Richmond, with the remaining members of his “Parents Slate” turfed by voters in that city. The slate had formed over concerns that parental rights were “becoming an endangered species in the sphere of our public school system.”
Tony Ward, a candidate who had been presented for the consideration of antiSOGI voters by website bcsogi.ca, was elected to Langley’s school board.
During his campaign for mayor of Vancouver, Fred Harding had said, “They got it all wrong” with SOGI and he demanded more consultation with parents. No candidates on Harding’s Vancouver 1st slate for school board came close to winning. Neither did Tony Dong, who quit the party over Harding’s comments and finished his race as an Independent.
Candidates in Surrey, Delta, New Westminster, North Vancouver and Coquitlam who had been recommended by bcsogi.ca all lost.