Board to consider motion for Davin school renaming
Davin School named after local man who pitched residential schools in 1879
A motion to rename Davin School will be given “due consideration” by the Regina public school board following Wednesday’s special meeting of electors.
“The board considers everything it hears,” said Regina Public spokesman Terry Lazarou.
“Whether these motions are binding or not, I can’t speak to that … But they respect the public’s right to state their piece.”
The motion is one of at least six to be presented by the local advocacy group Real Renewal, which petitioned the school board earlier this month to host the meeting.
The motion, to be introduced by Simon Moccasin and seconded by Florence Stratton, calls for the school to be renamed before the next school year, and a plaque to be erected to explain its namesake’s “other legacy.”
Nicholas Flood Davin’s reputation in Regina is as a politician, journalist, orator and founder of the Leader newspaper.
His lesser-known legacy is as the author of the 1879 federal Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds.
The so-called “Davin Report” advised the Canadian government to establish residential schools for First Nations children.
At least 6,000 Indigenous children died in residential schools, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the schools also resulted in the “cultural genocide” of Indigenous people.
The motion points out that “Davin’s only contribution to education is the Davin Report,” and that “the renaming of a school commemorating a man who laid the groundwork for the genocidal residential school system should not be controversial.”
The Regina Public School Division held an online public consultation in the fall about the Davin School name; it received approximately 1,375 responses.
The motion is “very similar to a lot of the comments that did come in,” said Lazarou. “We see a fairly balanced split between changing and keeping the name, and there’s good arguments on both sides.”
He said many of the petitioners already contributed via the online consultation.
Another motion the group plans to present is related to that consultation process.
The community expected that an in-person public education event would be held, but that didn’t happen. “Whereas the materials available on the Regina board of education (RBE) website for parents and school community councils (SCC) contains no information related to the history of residential schools, treaties, the TRC’s calls to action, and anti-Indigenous racism … Therefore be it resolved that the RBE annually provide, to parent members of each SCC, appropriate education related to” these subjects.
To this point, there is a page on the Regina Public School Division website that links to further information on these subjects.
The special meeting of electors, to be held Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Regina public school board office, is the result of a 30-signature petition that Real Renewal presented to the board before its regular meeting on Feb. 13.
A school board is required to hold a special meeting of electors if presented with a petition with 25 or more signatures, per the Education Act regulations.
The group requested the meeting after the school board decided not to hold an annual meeting of electors, which was required before the Education Act was changed last fall.
The meeting is open to members of the public and ratepayers of the Regina public school board.
This is the first special meeting of electors to occur in the Regina Public School Division in at least 15 years, said Lazarou.
Organizing the meeting required a “significant amount of resources,” said Lazarou, including shuffling the schedules of trustees and administrative staff, setting up the meeting room and rescheduling a group that had previously booked the space.
We see a fairly balanced split between changing and keeping the name, and there’s good arguments on both sides.