Top issues for school board trustee candidates
Hot topics debated at public meetings in final weeks before the election
In 2018, the province collected $2.6 billion in taxes from property owners to run elementary and secondary schools, according to Finance Ministry data.
Although the government is in charge of divvying up this money among B.C.’s 60 school districts, the trustees who will be elected Saturday will play a major role in determining how a portion of these taxpayer dollars will be spent.
The trustee role has been reduced over the decades, as the provincial government now sets the amount of school taxes collected and the curriculum taught, said Jason Ellis, a UBC assistant professor of education.
Still, who is elected can affect where and how students learn. “Voters who are parents with children in schools, they should think very carefully of electing trustees who will be their eyes and ears and voice on the board,” Ellis said.
Trustee candidates have faced several hot topics during this campaign, including support for special needs and vulnerable students, portables, selling school lands, the new SOGI 123 learning resources, child-care spaces at schools, and dysfunctional boards.
The SOGI 123 videos and lesson plans — which are part of the province’s move to include sexual orientation and gender identity in its new curriculum — have become one of the most talked about issues this election in Langley and some neighbouring communities. It often pits pro candidates, who like the pro-diversity message of the tools, against anti candidates, who complain they are inappropriate and don’t respect family values.
SOGI 123 has not, though, been a key issue on the campaign trail in some other Metro cities, although an anti-SOGI video released by Vancouver First mayoralty hopeful Fred Harding reportedly caused school board candidate Tony Dong to break with the party. At a recent two-hour all-candidates meeting in North Vancouver City, SOGI was not mentioned once. Instead, a major topic was the loss of school properties, such as the 2013 sale of the former Ridgeway Annex, which the board said could not be rebuilt as a new school because of the small lot size, although that high-growth part of North Vancouver is now desperate for more classrooms.
All eight candidates at the Oct. 3 meeting said they were against land sales, with incumbent Megan Higgins noting the developer paid $5.1 million for the property where nine single-family homes are to be built, a fraction of what that site would be worth today.
While she is against further sales, chairwoman Christie Sacré said she understood why the trustees who voted in favour of the deal did so: The board needed money to replace the aging Argyle and Handsworth schools, but was saddled with debt. “We were told by the ministry that we needed to get our debt solved,” she said.
The struggle to protect public lands while balancing budgets is playing out in other districts, too.
This spring, the Vancouver school board agreed to sell the land underneath Lord Roberts Annex so B.C. Hydro could build an underground substation. Proceeds from the sale will be used to build a new elementary school in Coal Harbour by 2023.
Parents told public hearings leading up to the decision that they were concerned about possible health risks linked to a substation underneath a school.
In recently submitted answers to questions posed by the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council, some candidates said they were opposed to the underground sale, not just because the board loses ownership of the underground land, but also because it sets a dangerous precedent of districts financing schools without the education ministry’s help. Others, though, said it was a creative way to get the school built at a time when there isn’t enough money available from the ministry, noting the board still doesn’t have the funding for another desperately needed school in Olympic Village.
PORTABLES THE NEW NORM?
While the issue of selling school land has been a hot topic in districts such as Surrey, Richmond and Sooke in the past, voters in many areas also have concerns about properties that districts are keeping. Trustees will continue to struggle with how to complete much-needed seismic upgrades on older schools and what to do with a growing number of portable classrooms at sites with too many students.
“I would hope that portables are not the new normal,” incumbent Susan Skinner responded to a parent question in North Vancouver, where there are 36 portables at 16 schools plus three large modular structures that each contain multiple classrooms.
Higgins said the solution is better planning with senior levels of government when giant housing developments are underway, such as 1,500 new homes in the Moodyville area. “Where are those kids going to go to school?”
Candidate Greg Zavediuk said the reliance on portables will continue unless the ministry agrees to build new schools in anticipation of growth enrolment. Right now the government waits until a school is over capacity before approving a new building, which then takes years to construct.
Portables are an election issue in many cities, including New Westminster and Surrey, the region’s fastest growing school district where 7,000 students attend class in 340 portables.
Another major issue for trustee candidates in Surrey is support and services for special needs students, which a large, vocal group of parents insists are not adequate.
In North Vancouver City, candidates Catherine Pope and Jullian Kolstee agreed funding for services for special needs children must be improved. “People don’t realize what a (mental health) crisis we are in,” said Kolstee.
They both also called the recruitment and retention of teachers a “critical” issue, one that emerged after a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that reduced class sizes and required B.C. to hire 3,500 new teachers. Districts with high costs of living, such as Vancouver, and those in remote areas have struggled to fill these gaps.
SOGI 123
Langley parent Brad Dirks has a transgender son in Grade 12 who could have benefited from the SOGI 123 learning resources, and he hopes voters will elect trustees who support the use of these videos and lesson plans.
“Students in school, they aren’t old enough to vote, they don’t get a say. It is up to us grown-ups, us adults, to set the stage for how these students get to go to school,” Dirks said. “Who we vote for is either going to make LGBTQ students proud and have a great go of it, or it is going to make them ashamed and pushed back in the closet.”
School trustees have no power to stop local teachers from using the new curriculum with sexual orientation and gender identity woven into it. This is now mandatory, following changes to the B.C. Human Rights Code in 2016.
But trustees can vote for a school district to ban the related SOGI 123 resource materials intended to help students understand the diversity of genders and family makeup, said Ellis. If there is majority support on the board to stop using these tools, the motion could be taken to the superintendent for a final decision, Ellis said.
But Glen Hansman, B.C. Teachers’ Federation president, argued the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the Surrey book-banning case would prohibit boards from opting not to use SOGI 123 materials.
“It would have to be justifiable. Given the SCC decision, there wouldn’t be a justifiable rationale that I can think of to prevent school staffs from using a provincially-developed resource dealing with LGBTQ issues. It would be immediately challenged and wouldn’t hold up,” he said.
An anti-SOGI 123 website says there are 37 trustee candidates running in a dozen school districts on a promise to ban these learning resources from classrooms, although that is a small percentage of the hundreds of trustee hopefuls on the ballot in B.C.’s 60 districts. There are clusters of these antiSOGI candidates in cities such as Richmond, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Campbell River and Burnaby, where tensions have at times run high. In Surrey, though, there are also four women running under the Surrey Students Now banner who held an information night with a university professor and an LGBTQ youth group to discuss why SOGI “is relevant and needed in schools.”
Dave Jensen, a Langley father of children in grades 3 and 9, said there are many education issues that are important to him this election, but one of those is halting the SOGI 123 resources because it was brought in too quickly without parental input. While he said he is not biased against LGBTQ people, he argued the teaching resources should be reworked to, for example, include other vulnerable children, such as those with special needs.
“Parents that I talk to, everyone’s concern is why is this in the elementary schools? It is not age appropriate,” he said.
The Education Ministry said it does not require school boards to approve SOGI 123, but that dissenting districts would have to choose some other similar learning resources to help teachers with the new curriculum.
DYSFUNCTIONAL BOARDS
A recurring topic at the North Vancouver City all-candidates debate was the need for the board’s next group of seven trustees to work together in a more professional way.
“It sounds like the dysfunctional behaviour had become the new norm (on the board), and this is unacceptable,” said candidate Mary Tasi Baker, a trustee from 2008 to 2011.
At issue are allegations by incumbent Skinner that she was bullied and sexually harassed during this term, which she said lowered her attendance at board meetings to about 50 per cent.
“It was a disastrous term. It caused problems with my health. I wasn’t able to attend (meetings). I also attended by teleconference for my own safety,” she said at the all-candidates meeting. “This campaign for me is all about renewal.”
The Education Ministry hired a consultant, who released a report in the spring that found “dysfunctional interpersonal trustee relations” hurt the board’s performance of its government duties. Sacré, identified in the report as competent and respected, said at the time the six recommendations for change were being addressed.
Other B.C. school boards have also experienced unusual challenges. In 2016, Vancouver’s entire board of trustees was fired by the education minister for failing to pass a balanced budget, and an external investigation found that bullying led to a toxic work environment.
The province appointed an outsider to oversee the VSB until a byelection in September 2017. This will be the first general election held since the firing, and 33 candidates are running for the nine trustee positions.
There was a Vision majority on the fired board, but the next group is more likely to have a mix of trustees from several parties and independents. Ellis noted there has been a re-alignment of municipal politics in Vancouver, with the creation of several new political parties.
And indeed this election may produce unique results in Vancouver, based on some of the trustee platforms. For example, both Vision and the Greens have made it a top priority to create muchneeded child-care spaces on school sites. The Elections B.C. website has a complete list of candidates running for school board.