New Westminster's board of education chair says a group of stakeholders plan to meet to review the district's practice of placing distressed special needs students in "safe rooms."
Last week, The Record published a story on the district's use of the rooms, which have upset some parents and community members, including Faith Bodnar, executive director of Inclusion B.C. "We agreed that we would set up a joint task force to review the board's policy and procedures around this with all of the stakeholders," said board chair Michael Ewen.
Board vice-chair Jonina Campbell, superintendent John Woudzia and Ewen met in mid-July with the recently elected district parents' advisory council executive, Ewen said.
"The message was that we wanted to have better working relationships, and all parties felt the need to improve the way in which things were done and to better serve the community. And one of the issues that was raised was the issue of these quiet rooms, and these quiet workspaces,"
Ewen said. "We agreed, at the end of the day, we'd establish this task force."
The task force would include representatives from the New Westminster Teachers' Union, Canadian Union of Public Employees, principals, vice-principals, parents and senior administrators. Ewen said a date hasn't been set yet because it's difficult to coordinate a meeting in the summer, when many people are on vacation or busy.
"Where it all falls down at this point, is a number of those people haven't been invited because it's the summer, and I'm not going to phone John Woudzia at home because he is on summer vacation," Ewen said.
As for the issue of safe rooms, Ewen said he hasn't heard concerns from parents at the board level.
"I can tell you, in the last couple of years, there have been no cases that have come to the board," he said.
"My problem is, I have no knowledge of what you are talking about. I have no incident ... because I can't do it based on somebody phoning up Ms. Harris as a good example."
Ewen is referring to last week's Record article where local parent Wendy Harris shared her concern that the district will use the "safe rooms" more frequently because of cuts to support staff for the coming school year.
Harris said she spoke with a family whose child is being placed in the rooms, even though they oppose it.
"It would be irresponsible of the board to say we have this parent who has no knowledge of what's going on, has no experience, but she's raising a concern for someone else, but she won't tell us who she raised a concern for," Ewen said about Harris.
"It becomes an esoteric circle," he said. "To be able to deal with those types of things we have to have specifics."
Local district parent advisory council members Maya Russell and Heather Burke are said to be the parents who will attend the meeting on behalf of the district parent council. Neither returned The Record's calls for comment.
As for Harris, she said she is "encouraged" that district stakeholders are meeting to talk about the important issue.
