It’s easy to see why parents are upset. The lack of transparency in the process is galling.
Parents are up in arms about a recent decision by the Cowichan Valley School District to scuttle the nature-based learning program at Q’Shintul Mill Bay Nature School.
The school board voted to do this in a closed meeting and notified parents of this major disruption to their kids’ lives and their educational plans in an email.
This was a terrible way for the school board to go about this process.
The Cowichan Valley has been through school closures in the past and the public consultation process has inevitably been combative and fraught with emotion. It’s not a pleasant thing to have to go through, on anyone’s side.
But the contention by the district that they didn’t have to talk to the community about this in advance because they’re just closing down a program, not technically a school, is disingenuous at best. This is really a school closure, whether they are going to continue to use the building or not.
It was disrespectful to the community, and did not treat the parents as partners in education.
Then to make the decision out of public view just compounded the problem. The very least they could have done was to debate the issue at a public board meeting where parents could have turned up to hear the arguments, if nothing else.
Instead, they didn’t hear about it until it was a fait accompli.
There’s no doubt this was going to be an unpopular decision, and we can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason it was done so secretively. Was this just an attempt to avoid conflict? If so it has failed, badly. Instead the process has likely just made people more angry and postponed the conflict until after the fact.
We don’t think that school trustees went into this with bad intentions. Being a trustee can be a thankless job at times, trying to balance the needs of a diverse student population with a budget total over which they have virtually no say (the provincial government allots the dollars). Inevitably, difficult decisions arise about things like school closures, which can be agonizing for everyone. Sometimes, programs must be cut and schools must be closed. There have been more than a few tears shed at past school closure meetings, and not a few angry words.
But it’s important for elected officials to be willing, especially at this kind of grass roots level, to face the electorate and make their decisions in a public forum. When they don’t, people feel blindsided and marginalized.