As a parent I am asking the current School District 57 trustee and board chair Rachael Weber to resign from the board.
In the spring, I wrote a letter to the editor in support of keeping Weber on due to her inexperience in the position and optimism that she was wanting to make positive change in the district along with other newly elected trustees. But unfortunately, it seems that the board chair is more interested in giving a platform for anti-SOGI activists than representing all students, staff and parents in this district.
I believe that trustee Weber’s actions over the last nine months coddling anti-SOGI activists while lashing out at critics of her attempts to bring prayer into a public school setting is unacceptable.
On Tuesday, Weber yet again brought prayer into our public school board meetings saying “I pray” but this time leaving out amen when she was done. I wasn’t sure if I was watching a church service or a public school board meeting but no matter if the prayer is Christian or any other denomination it doesn’t belong at public school board meetings. We need more than prayers to fix the major holes in student learning and behavioural support that trustees are failing to understand and fix in this district.
I am also worried that Weber can’t separate her political aspirations and the inherent conflicts arising from being both chair and official candidate for the BC Conservatives. In Tuesday’s meeting, trustee Holland put a motion forward that asked trustee Weber during new business in the agenda to explain how she would manage the inherent conflict associated with being a trustee and a BC Conservative Candidate. Trustee Weber, Antrim and Brennan all voted against the motion and it was defeated. This is basic transparency that they voted against and didn’t even bother to explain why they were voting the way they did at the time of the vote.
After nine months in the position of chair, Weber seemed to struggle to know what to do to even get Holland’s motion to a vote and needed help multiple times to follow proper procedure on requiring a seconder. It is baffling that the three trustees who voted against Holland’s motion think it’s ok for a chair of any elected board to not be accountable to the people that voted for them by refusing to answer important questions like if they have the ability to separate politics from their role as trustee. If Weber won’t even bother to explain at a meeting how she plans to avoid conflict of interest while being the official candidate of the BC Conservatives, how can she be trusted?
Maybe Weber didn’t want to answer to that motion because she already crossed a line and doesn’t want to be held accountable for it. I am concerned that a potential conflict of interest exists and was not managed correctly by Weber when she objected in September’s SD57 education committee meeting to having SOGI related days like Trans Awareness day mentioned in the district calendar, calling them “Sex Days'' and complaining that it would cause parents to call her and be upset with her. It is really concerning that a group of anti-SOGI parents has so much sway with the board chair who should have had the awareness of conflict of interest to avoid offering her opinion based on what happened this summer with her party the BC Conservatives.
Weber was asked by the Citizen this summer how her running for office would not put her in conflict of interest with her role as chair and the Citizen specifically referenced as an example Conservative leader John Rustad and failed candidate Karin Litzcke’s support for two adults in Kelowna who thought it was ok to start screaming at a kid and questioning her gender at a sports event. Both the BC NDP and Green party issued a joint statement calling their support unacceptable and transphobic. Weber in response to the mention of this controversy by the Citizen said that she could act independently of her leader and party positions and stated that she supports inclusivity including gender identity.
Clearly that didn’t happen when Weber was triggered by a school calendar discussion that would mention Transgender Day. This is not how you manage potential conflict of interest and to even refer to recognizing SOGI related days as “sex days” gives a brief glimpse of what Weber’s true feelings are on inclusion away from her very few carefully scripted public statements.
As a keen observer of the actions of the board of trustees over the last nine months it is abundantly clear to me that Weber’s version of inclusion is to give power to anti-SOGI voices that has taken away all the attention from major issues like district literacy and numeracy assessment results that are not being released to the public by this board of education.
As a parent who cares deeply about the success of our students in the district I feel my ability to voice my concerns about district-wide problems at board meetings have been severely harmed by decisions made by the board of trustees in the last nine months to restrict public comments due to the chair’s inability to manage criticism and anti-SOGI protesters in meetings.
I am asking parents to join me in calling for the chair's resignation to stop this board from fanning the flames of intolerance in this district and further restricting our ability to hold the board accountable for their actions.
Richard Parks
Prince George
