Editor:
An open letter to New Westminster schools:
Please stop sending communications unless there is actionable information in them; please also stop sending communications expressing your best wishes and good will and so on and so forth. We’ve received numerous of these and we understand your concerns and your best intentions; there is no need to repeat yourself and to expound upon the concern.
Consider what effect does it have upon the anxious and concerned to receive paragraphs upon paragraphs of lamentations of concern from the education authority.
Consider what difficulty does it impose upon those with English comprehension limitations when the actionable items are buried in a fragment of a sentence within a paragraph among many.
The district has exhibited its lack of understanding of its linguistic privilege and its neuro-typical direction by sending us email after email with paragraph upon paragraph of emotional lamentations and well-wishes, and eschewing simple and actionable lists. What we need, as parents in a diverse community, is clear and simple directions. We don’t need to hear your lamentations about the difficulties you and your employees face, we don’t need to hear how you’re doing your best to adapt, we don’t need to hear these things repeatedly in numerous emails. What we need is simple and actionable directives on what we parents must do in order to ensure that our children transition into the new school year without difficulty.
We, as parents in a diverse community, need nothing more from you than simple sentences in an enumerated list.
Please stop tormenting us.
Dan Leslie, New Westminster
