Students, parents, teachers, and support staff from Kelly Road Secondary School are being invited to join a School District 57 trustee, school board superintendent, and a Lheidli T’enneh First Nation councillor and elder on a committee to help shape a plan to combine the school’s history with that of the traditional land where it was built.
They will form the Engagement Process Working Group to help the board gather information and hear the opinions of the community in the wake of last week’s controversial decision by trustees to consider renaming the school Shas Ti Secondary School at the suggestion of a group representing the Lheidli T’enneh.
“The working group will represent and be selected by various community members to ensure diversity and inclusion,” said SD 57 chair Tim Bennett. “They will share a responsibility to shape and guide School District 57’s proposed engagement plan with input, ideas and feedback from their stakeholder groups. The result will be a plan that provides opportunity for public participation and purposeful feedback and input on elements of the new school project.”
The unanimous vote to engage in the process to consider the name change touched off a wave of protest which resulted in a student gathering in front of the school last Wednesday and another rally Saturday in front of the SD 57 offices on Ferry Avenue.
Bennett said the Kelly Road committee will have to consider the purpose of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and its calls for action on healing relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians while keeping in mind the definition of reconciliation, which is the restoration of friendly relations and the action of making one view or belief compatible with another.
“In this case, the definition of reconciliation couldn’t be more relevant,” said Bennett. “We’re asking this working group to support the district in restoring friendly relations and making feelings and beliefs compatible with one another through the upcoming engagement process.”
Bennett said the group will consider the extended history of the area from Salmon River to Cranbrook Hill, which for centuries was a grizzly hunting territory for the Lheidli T’enneh people while also respecting the tradition associated with the name Kelly Road name, which the school adopted when it opened as a two-room schoolhouse in 1957. Shas Ti means "grizzly path" in the Dakelh language used by Lheidli T'enneh.
The group will include two students, a teacher, a support staff member, a member of the Kelly Road Parent Advisory Council, the Kelly Road principal or vice-principal, a Lheidli T’enneh councillor, a Lheidli T’enneh elder, the SD 57 superintendent and a trustee.
“The guiding question for the group and the participating public will be, going forward: How do we honour the inclusive history of this new school and the land it resides on?” said superintendent Anita Richardson. “This will ensure an extension of the history, not an omission of either.”
Meetings began this week and details of groups plan moving forward will be made public before classes are dismissed for the two-week spring break, March 13.
