Four New Westminster district parent advisory council resolutions - including one to ban teachers from serving as trustees - have been accepted by a province-wide group that lobbies the provincial government on behalf of parents.
The British Columbia Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils has accepted four resolutions forwarded by New Westminster parents and will vote on them at its annual general meeting in May.
The parents want British Columbia to follow Ontario and Alberta's lead in banning school board employees, including teachers, from serving as school trustees to avoid a genuine or perceived conflict of interest. Currently, in British Columbia, teachers are only banned from running in school districts where they work. New Westminster has three teachers serving on the seven-member board.
"I recognize the inherent conflict of interest of a board of trustees that is supposed to be an independent body working in the best interest of education," Rob Peregoodoff, the district parent advisory council's secretary, said, explaining why he voted to endorse the motions. "There is a conflict of interest if a person is an active, teaching member of (the B.C. Teachers' Federation."
First-term trustees Jonina Campbell and David Phelan, both teachers, told The Record last week that voters were well aware of their professions when they campaigned last fall.
"We all knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors, and so many people said, 'It's actually great you are in this because you understand the inside of what happens,'" Campbell said.
"We were all very up front that we were teachers," Phelan said. "It was talked about quite a bit in the various all-candidates meetings and in the press.
"I'm a teacher. I'm also a parent. I'm also a community member. I've got a variety of perspectives on the school system," he said.
Meanwhile, the other resolutions include a call for a return to "targeted" special needs funding, which would take special needs funds from the district's general operating budget and put it back specifically towards special needs students; a reporting process on student suspensions and expulsions; and a "universal," provincewide complaint process.
The district parent advisory council is waiting to hear if a fifth resolution - which would make it mandatory for school boards to have a question period during public meetings and to have those responses recorded in school board minutes - is accepted, said an email from New Westminster district parent advisory chair Wendy Harris. The resolution is still under consideration because a similar resolution was passed in 2007, Harris wrote.
"Basically they are working out what information would need to accompany this before they can approve it or not," her email states. "However, please be advised that the four resolutions no longer belong to the New Westminster DPAC but to the membership of BCCPAC. Even if there was a call to rescind the motion, it cannot be done by DPAC or by anyone else but the membership (BCCPAC)."
