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Les Leyne: School board's supercilious condescension is what prompted minister's warning

The Greater Victoria School District鈥檚 board of education accepted nebulous survey results that backed their position on police liaison officers and discounted all the findings that didn鈥檛.
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Education Minister Lisa Beare to put the Greater Victoria School District鈥檚 board of education on notice Friday. TIMES COLONIST FILE PHOTO

First there was the decision to bar local police liaison officers from visiting Victoria district schools to build relationships — a bad call.

Then there was a cascade of well-founded community objections that exposed all the erroneous assumptions behind that decision.

Then there was a sustained display of supercilious, arrogant condescension by school trustees who closed their minds to the idea that a second look was in order.

Throughout, they discounted valid concerns about school safety issues like gangs as just being “potential,” and quibbled over data.

They accepted nebulous survey results that backed their position and discounted all the findings that didn’t.

They clung to human rights commissioner Kasari Govender’s support for their decision, despite being the only district in the province to maintain such a stance. (91原创 initially did so, but reversed it.)

Ten days ago, they invited the commissioner to enthusiastically validate their decision again, and gave her the floor for 30 minutes, compared with the five minutes allotted to all those who have been objecting.

Finally, last week, there was a devastating critique by the chiefs of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. They revealed the board has been treating them with the same indifferent disdain that it has for everyone else who is concerned about the decision.

“The board has failed repeatedly to listen from a place of humility, openness and mutual respect,” wrote the chiefs, citing the fact an experienced, trusted Indigenous liaison RCMP officer has been pulled from schools.

Those are some of the elements that led Education Minister Lisa Beare to put the Greater Victoria School District’s board of education on notice Friday.

She set out a plan in which the trustees have three weeks to welcome provincially appointed special adviser Kevin Godden into their midst.

They must work with him to rewrite the safety plan the board grudgingly submitted last week, which Beare has found deficient when it comes to building “strong relationships and collaboration with law enforcement, First Nations and others.”

They also have to work with all the police, parent groups and counsellors that they have managed to offend along the way.

If they don’t submit a plan by the time students return from Christmas break on Jan. 6, Beare cited the authority she has to terminate them and indicated she’s ready to use it.

The focal point of the controversy is school police liaison officers. They were barred from district schools last year because the board concluded “undeniably, there are some students and staff who don’t feel safe with police in schools.”

“There are 60 school districts in this province,” Beare remarked Friday. “I’m not having this conversation with 59 other districts.”

The sole credit the board deserves to date is for their response later Friday to Beare’s marching orders. All of a sudden they are eager to redo the plan and “work during the holiday season” to get it right. Amazing what an imminent termination notice can do to a team’s attitude.

Finally doing what local leaders, experienced youth counsellors, parents and numerous other groups have been urging them to do for over a year is now a “high priority.” But it will take a long time to make amends and restore the breaches they’ve created in numerous important relationships.

The only thing missing from the work plan Beare imposed on the board is the idea of a formal apology for how this issue has been handled.

It’s warranted, but given the track record, it would be too much to expect.

Just So You Know: Here’s some free advice to special adviser Godden: Touch base with former deputy superintendent Harold Caldwell.

Last month in this space, he provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how toxic the board office’s work environment has become over this issue.

He took early retirement in September after a stress leave due to the tensions caused by the SPLO decision and the board’s meddling attempts to blame staff for the controversy that the board itself created.

Chair Nicole Duncan demanded he turn over all his correspondence on the issue, something he felt was well outside her governance duties.

“Every time I turned around there was a comment or another action … impugning my integrity as an educational leader. Being with people so unwilling to support you just eats you up.”

The board ignored his retirement after 24 years of service and didn’t give him so much as a Tim Hortons card.

Duncan responded to his published comments by expressing surprise and saying they were untrue.

If the brand new spirit of conciliation wavers in the slightest now that Godden is ramrodding the rethink, she’ll be in for another surprise.

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