Jumping to Conclusions - the VSB Election.

School board elections tend to be low profile - they shouldn't be - but they typically are.  By the time voters work their way through the ballot and find themselves at school board a lot of people seem to lose interest in deciding. That's too bad as some of the most important societal decisions are made in our schools.  I've previously made public the kind of person I think is best suited for the role of trustee.  You can revisit my picks here. In this commentary I want to speculate on who will actually end up on the school board tomorrow and whether one should consider doing anything about it.

In past elections when there were two major parties going up against each other the popularity of the winning mayor had a lot to do with who won school board (though not always).  This time around with four serious contenders (though most pundits suggest it is still really a right/center race between Sims (NPA)  and Stewart (Vision in all but name).  Sylvester is presented as an ideological center ground.  Who knows, maybe she could squeak up the middle.  Running a distant fourth is Hector Bremner who formed his own party once the NPA denied him a nomination spot. This diversity on the center-right with no clear left wing candidate means, I think, that by the time voters get to school board choices they will be straying long and far from any kind of ideological consistency. So, here are my best bets on who will end up steering Vancouver's education system for the next four years.

I doubt that any of the candidates from the new right wing groupings (Vancouver 1st, Coalition Vancouver, Pro Vancouver, or Yes Vancouver ) will manage to win a seat on school board.  A couple of them have name recognition, but given the low polling numbers for their mayoralty candidate it's not likely they'll tip the scales enough to get a seat on the board.

I'm pretty sure that there will be enough conservative votes to elect at least two NPA'ers to the board (if not three). I would prefer that not to be the case. But, given the way things in Vancouver are shaping up, I suspect some people will consider these conservatives to be a centrist compromise choice. I think they're wrong and actually a dangerous choice this election, but the will of those who vote is what ultimately matters. So I'm going to bet on Ballantyne (an incumbent) and Richardson (who was previously on the board) getting enough just enough votes to join the board.

I don't think any of the independents will do more than a good showing.  I would like to see Morgane Oger get elected, but history runs against them. Of course, this could be the election where an independent with solid name recognition does get elected.  I would like that, but am not holding my breath.

I think there will be at lest two greens in the top three. These are the right/center candidates that appeal to a good swarth of middle-of-the-road voters. I'm with Patti Bacchus here on why it's not a good thing to vote for the greens, but I am fairly certain that at least the two incumbent greens will return to the school board and given the tenor of the times they will likely pull their running mate on with them.

I think that maybe one COPE candidate will get on the board, but the back room politics that created vision has had lasting damage on the ability of COPE to break back into electoral victory of any sort. However, if there was an election to turn the tide, this would be it. With Jean Swanson running for city council (essentially as the political conscience of justice and official opposition to the center-right block that will likely dominate things) her voters may be enough to swing at least one COPE candidate onto the school board.  Here the weight of the Vancouver District Labour Council endorsement of Barb Parrot (former VSB teachers' union activist) may be enough to give COPE a seat.

Vision is likely going to get shellacked though I think that long time trustee (first elected with COPE) Alan Wong will hold his seat. Vision is only running three candidates this time and Wong's two running mates are relatively unknown outside of PACs and the internal politics of public schools. Given the absence of a Vision mayoralty candidate I don't think things bode well for vision on school board.

OneCity will likely get two spots on the school board. I'm betting on incumbent Carrie Bercic. For second spot I suspect Erica Jaaf, given her Parent Advisory Advocacy, might get her the spot.  Jennifer Reddy also has an extensive network across the city as an immigrant support worker. Ideally all three of them would be great on the school board (that's how I voted).

So let me jump to some early conclusions!  Here is my predication for tomorrow's Vancouver School Board election listed by last name in rough order from most votes to least number of votes.

Fraser (Green)
Gonzalez (Green)
Chan-Pedley (Green) 
Wong (Vision)
Bercic (One City)
Jaaf (One City)
Richardson (NPA)
Ballantyne (NPA) 
Parrott (COPE)

I don't think this would be a good outcome for our schools. For one thing, past experience tells us that the greens are more likely to act like the NPA than either Vision or COPE.  Slight shifts to the right or to the center could make a big difference in terms of the composition of the board. Voters opting for the new right parties could pull down NPA votes enough to bring one or two more Vision or OneCity candidates onto the board (but without electing any of the new right candidates). Defections from Visions right could add a third NPA trustee to the board and potentially knock off COPE or Vision's Wong.  There are all kinds of ways this could go.

I'll end with a plug of my own recommendations and ask that you help me make my above predictions wrong, wrong, wrong!

Vote for the following great people:

Erin Arnold  (Vision)

Carrie Bercic  (OneCity)

Diana Day    (COPE)

Erica Jaaf   (OneCity)

Aaron Leung (Vision)

Morgan Oger (Independent)

Barb Parrott  (COPE)

Jennifer Reddy (OneCity)
Alan Wong (Vision)

GUEST POST: Terry Mullen for UNA Elected Director.

By Terry Mullen - Candidate for UNA Elected Resident Director

The final day for voting to fill the three vacant positions on the UNA Board is November 1^st, the date of the UNA AGM. 

I am running for one of those positions.  The greatest obstacle for candidates to overcome in “campaigning” is that of communicating with the electorate, that is, the residents.  The UNA has refused to make available to candidates the email addresses of residents, citing considerations of privacy.  Fair enough, I suppose, though the UNA has that information and regularly uses it. 

Fortunately John Tompkins, the editor of The Campus Resident, has been proactive in providing candidates a forum.  You may have read the candidate profiles in the September edition and the question and answer section in the October edition which came out yesterday.  Indeed, you may also have read my article, “We Shape Our Buildings and Thereafter They Shape Us”, published in the August edition, in which I discuss my concerns in regard to the Stadium Road Neighbourhood project.

I invite you to read the attached flyer. It’s brief (mercifully, you might well say) but it sets out what I see as the more important issues that are within the jurisdiction of the UNA.

Terry Mullen

Hawthorn Place

Parents, Rights, Responsibilities, and the VSB Election.

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Education should be about our children, but it really seems that it has become just a little bit too much about parents. Candidates for our school board are eager to say that they are pro-parent, pro-parental rights, pro-parent consultations.  I’m a parent, I get that I should have a say. But I think some candidates are taking this a bit too far.

Being a parent is a role that carries with it many obligations and responsibilities.  For better or worse we are the people with primary responsibility for the care of our children.  As a parent I know the sleepless nights or worry just as well as the happy moments. As parents my partner and I were there every step of the way for our children. We don’t claim perfection – no earthy human has a right to such a claim. But we did our best. When our children were in public school we become involved in all the regular parent volunteer things – hot dog sales, field trip assistants, driving teams to sporting events, participating in the parent advisory councils, etc. Much of my early involvement was like other parents – our kids were in school and we wanted to help make their situation the best it could be.

As parents we share an uneasy custody with teachers and our schools.  Our children spend a big part of their day in school, with other children, under the care of other adults. Most parents might think ourselves experts on our own children, but we are not experts on teaching children.  We have an obligation to work with and trust our partners in education.  Part of our partnership is making sure that education works for all children, not just our own.

My own children’s years in public education were a tumultuously time for public education. There were massive government funding cuts that provoked repeated teachers strikes. There were diminishing school-based resources.  Like a lot of others parents our initial involvement in school politics was because of our own kids. However, it soon became apparent that no child’s needs were being met.  What was called for was more than a “my kid first approach.”  Supporting public education meant reaching out to parents, teachers, and the wider community and politically mobilizing to make real differences.

I became part of a Vancouver parent group that called its self Save Our Schools and through that got more active in my school-based parent advisor council, ultimately serving six years as an executive member of Vancouver District Parents Advisory Council.  During that time many of us shared the conviction that meeting the needs of all children was what a public education system was all about. 

Of course just about everybody uses some variant of the same words: education should be about meeting the needs of all students.  I learned that not every parent actually means the same thing when they say that.  Some seemed to mean just what it says: real needs of all children. But there were others I have met who seemed to really mean "meet the needs of my student."  

The same can be said for the slogan of safety in schools.    Most of us we think this means something like ensuring no child is bullied, that schools are earthquake proof, and/or that it implies a focus on issues of emergency preparedness. However, this is also a coded phrase that speaks to a conservative anti-LGBTQ movement intensely opposed to any kind of non-heteronormative sexual orientation or gender identity.

I’ll be honest; I don’t get the anger and intensity of anti-SOGI activists. Their motivations seem opaque. What I do get is the harm and hurt they cause. Their actions intensify a climate of fear and anxiety for youth in our schools. While they claim to be concerned about school safety their fear that a gender-neutral bathroom might undermine their parental authority cause real harm in our schools. Does it really matter if a child prefers a gender-neutral name? or wants to be addressed as they/them? Should we really care that a child chooses to wear non-gender binary clothing or to dress in a way that deviates from cultural gender norms? I don't think we should. The weight of peer-reviewed research supports my assertion and undermines the anti-SOGI activists' misconceptions.

As an anthropologist I have seen enough of the world to realize that there are all kinds of ways to express gender identity. In fact there are no universally gendered codes of behaviour, dress, or identity. Humans are delightfully diverse and expressive.  Yet I have met members of a parental minority who really seem to think that for all time and across all humanity there are only two genders, they are set at birth, and that any alteration is a threat to the wellbeing of all children – hence their deployment of the cover term “school safety.”

I am a university-based teacher. I have family members who were and are public school teachers. I have seen, and have been told of, the trauma that our children and youth face when adults demand the maintenance of a heteronormative binary orthodoxy of man and woman.

My professional work involves researching structures of oppression. I study the ways oppressive systems –like the Indian Residential Schools- create intergenerational trauma. By the same account demanding that a child conform to a male/female binary when that is not their orientation (or that they preform in any way that denies their true self) is a form of harm, it traumatizes: this is a form of oppression. We should not countenance such attitudes from fellow parents. We cannot tolerate this from people wanting to be elected school trustees.

As a parent I have always understood there are good reasons to involve parents in education. There are peer-reviewed studies that lay out how involved parents contribute to better educational outputs for all children. Parents should be involved and consulted. But I do not support the kind of hubris a minority of parents display when they try to insinuate their unfounded ideological beliefs into the public school system.  Whether they code it as safety in schools or clearly state their opposition to BC’s SOGI curriculum they are creating a harmful school setting that further traumatizes children and youth who may already be at risk of harm.

So when I cast my ballot for school trustees in the upcoming election I will look very closely at each candidate, their political organization, and the people they have decided to align with. I will pay very close attention to the groups and movements that publicly endorse them. I will be choosing people who show they are not afraid to stand up to bullies.  I will vote for people who speak clearly and mean what they say. I will look for champions of education.

This election I will be voting for these people (listed in order their names appear on the ballot):

• REDDY, Jennifer (OneCity)
• BERCIC, Carrie (OneCity)
• JAAF, Erica (OneCity)
• PARROTT, Barb (COPE)
• LEUNG, Aaron (Vision Vancouver)
• WONG, Allan (Vision Vancouver)
• DAY, Diana (COPE)
• ARNOLD, Erin (Vision Vancouver)
• OGER, Morgane