Letter: New West school trustees showed 'cowardice' on mask issue

Editor:

Having just survived the kindergarten-gradual-entry-gauntlet for the first time, I was looking to get involved.

To this end, I attended the School District 40 board meeting on Sept. 28 to support the K-3 mask mandate motion brought forward by the District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC).

I attended hoping to find courage - what I found was cowardice and I logged off disappointed and angered by the experience.

I was shocked at the amateur rules of order: routine business was casually rubber-stamped, while the chair was continually confused as to proper proceedings. This culminated when the parent-led DPAC motion immediately suffered an unchecked hostile amendment. With barely a discussion, the motion was rewritten to completely remove the initial intent and instead offer a watered-down statement that committed the board to nothing. There was a lot of sentiment that “I’m not an expert” and therefore shouldn’t “undermine” the Public Health Officer (PHO) around the table.

Only trustee Mary Lalji protested this offensive breech of civil proceedings, while the other trustees cowardly abdicated the responsibilities they were elected to.

There was very little the board could have done that would have been more insulting to the DPAC membership; parents have been yelling for months for a strong plan from our PHO that we deserved to have at the end of July. Another letter would be just one more to fall on deaf ears.

These actions also have the insidious effect of wiping the fact that the board effectively voted against the DPAC motion from the record. Instead the record shows their token support for a meaningless measure of their own invention.

We were never asking for platitudes. We wanted action.

Responding to the backlash, an emergency meeting was called to "re-visit" the DPAC motion. However, they were saved by the bell when it came time to actually show some leadership. As we know that under pressure from the public, the PHO finally updated their stance. Trustees quickly agreed that there was no point to this motion and moved to strike it a second time without discussion.

Trustee Lalji objected, wanting the record to show that the board voted against the DPAC motion on Wednesday night; for this she was rudely silenced as the other trustees moved to sweep this issue under the rug.

I was again left disappointed by our school board, who seem more interested in maintaining the PHO’s image than engaging in substantive discussion to protect students under their care.

Sure, the B.C. PHO joined Alberta Premier Jason Kenny in saying “everything is fine” at the end of July, so one fall school plan certainly had to be business as usual. However, we then spent August with independent experts yelling “it’s not fine...” while our PHO played chicken with the Delta variant.

So any reasonable planning committee would have to been forgiven for considering another school year amid a pandemic that will be raging globally for a few more years (minimum). You know? A redundancy plan. Just in case, like everywhere else in the world, we haven’t actually defeated the pandemic?

Yes, I am upset with the SD40 Board of Trustees, but the truth is that we have been failed by every administrative level, from the premier’s office right down to the local school boards. Any level could have created a plan, but it is painfully clear that none had a plan B ready to go should “business as usual” not work out.

So, instead here we are with a piecemeal and ad-hoc set of rules being implemented by over-worked staff in the schools on the fly, seemingly random from school to school. I'm glad we parents and teachers have gotten some traction, but this sounds like the recipe for a disaster to me.

I guess we get to wait and see.

The true measure of society is in how it cares for those members who cannot care for themselves.

We failed spectacularly in protecting long-term care home residents; early in the pandemic, and currently, as we allow unvaccinated individuals to continue spreading the virus inside and killing our elders.

In July, anyone immunocompromised was left to hide under rocks and hope for the best as all public precautions were thrown to the wind. I can only hope they feel safer today.

And now, the single largest group of unvaccinated individuals is being protected in a manner that can at best be called scatter-brained; and only at that level because parents have been screaming for months. As we watch childhood infection rates climb across the province now is the time to ask: are we going to fail our children and future too?

We have been riding waves born of official denial, fuelled by policy delays, and crowned by misplaced accusations; couldn’t we maybe get off of this roller coaster?

Wouldn’t you like to get off of this terrible ride? I would.

Evan Sklarski, New Westminster