NPA expels two school trustees over views on transgender students
Lack of ‘ understanding of the LGBTQ+ community’ cited
The Non- Partisan Association expelled two of its elected school trustees from caucus Friday after they held a news conference and claimed leading realtors are upset the school board’s proposed policies on transgender students will affect the quality of publicschool education and may reduce real estate prices.
The NPA released a statement late Friday afternoon declaring it had formally expelled Ken Denike and Sophia Woo “given that the two have chosen to follow their own course in various matters without consulting with the other members of caucus.”
“The caucus has concluded that Denike and Woo do not share the same level of sensitivity and understanding of the LGBTQ+ community.”
During their news conference in a Chinese restaurant Friday, Woo and Denike condemned the way Vision trustees on the school board are trying to bring in a policy to protect transgender students from discrimination and ostracization.
Parent Jane Wang, sitting beside Woo and Denike, said the transgender policy that is scheduled to go before the board on Monday is a threat to her two young children and those of many other parents, some of whom “were close to emotional collapse” at a recent public meeting where the transgender policy was debated.
Wang, who said she is an engineer, has already placed her two children on a waiting list for a private school. She does not want them to have to deal with the possibility that a transgender public- school student could, under the proposed policy, enter either a boys’ or girls’ washroom.
Asked to provide the names of what Denike said were “senior people in the real estate industry who are expressing real concerns” about the effects of the proposed transgender policy, neither Woo nor Denike would provide any names.
However, the first sentence of a release that Woo and Denike put together to draw journalists to the news conference at Flamingo House Chinese Restaurant said:
“Realtors express concern that a revised policy on sexual orientation and gender identities could negatively impact enrolment of international students and west side students in Vancouver’s public schools.”
Asked if realtors are concerned that foreign parents will stop buying houses or condos for their children to live in while they attend school in Vancouver, Denike said west side realtors know there is strong “competition” for international students, whose offshore parents might avoid Vancouver schools in the future.
There are 1,170 fee- paying foreign students in Vancouver public schools, Denike said.
Woo and Denike said the realtors they talked to were mostly concerned about “the quality of education” public school students would receive in light of what they said is a flawed, rushed new transgender policy.
But Denike, in response to a question, said the realtors are also concerned about declining property values.
Bill Dick, managing broker for Macdonald Realty in Vancouver, said he is not aware the VSB’s transgender policy has become a real estate issue. “There hasn’t been any discussion in my office, and we have 175 realtors in Vancouver.”
A spokesman for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, who declined to be identified, said the first they heard about alleged realtors’ complaints about the transgender policy was in Friday afternoon phone calls from media outlets following Denike’s and Woo’s comments.
At the news conference at the Cambie Street restaurant, roughly two dozen ethnic Chinese parents who had squeezed into a side room of the facility to support Woo and Denike clapped enthusiastically when one Asian parent stood up and said:
“How would you feel if you had a daughter in the washroom at one of these public schools and a transgender student — maybe a girl, maybe a boy — walked in? How would you feel?”
The man, dressed in suit and tie, would not identify himself.
In an interview, Lana Liu said she has been part of a group that has gathered 4,000 signatures — “mostly Chinese” — protesting the school board’s proposed transgender policy.