👎🏾A complicated process to sign up to speak at meetings
👎🏾Members of the public being discouraged from from speaking on the public record at meetings

Join us and hold your school board accountable! Kids, families, teachers, support staff, building service workers, and more deserve our support!

👎🏾Too many private sessions where the public is not welcome and cannot participate
👎🏾Reduced time for the public or stakeholder groups to comment at meetings
👎🏾Removal of the “personnel committee”, which was the only meeting dedicated to discussing the issues affecting staff
👇🏾

Rules of order should be used to enable participation and engagement, instead they’re used to shut it down. We won’t stop showing up and making our voices heard and insist we talk about what matters to folks impacted by public ed 🎯 #bced #vanpoli

Locked 🔒 doors & school fields, the absence of a food committee with experts to guide our school food programs - the board can feel like a place we are locked out of and where the rules are at best inconsistent and at worst punitive and exclusionary.👇🏾

As we’ve heard, people want to be invited in, generously and with enthusiasm, so that we can build a system that everyone feels a part of. Proud of. Invested in.👇🏾

Second, a motion to consult school communities on school field use, we are faced with locked school fields and an impending heat dome, folks need places to go, let’s find solutions together! See 🔗 in bio for full motions! #bced #vanpoli

I worry that the culture of this school board is to limit voices both of trustees and members of the public. You’ll note this isn’t the first time I’ve said this.

I was elected by people in this city and I will stop at nothing to make their voices, and my voice heard.

I have reached out to past trustees, former superintendent, and I see no precident for this.👇🏾

Today is the board budget meeting and I am unable to attend in person. I have spent the last five hours debating discussing and arguing with the board chair about whether or not I can attend this meeting virtually, despite past practice where others are allowed without special permission or vote.👇🏾

I believe that it is my job is to listen to student and staff needs, to establish our values through budget priorities.

We must start preparing for our next chance to vote in brave leaders with the will to stand up for kids. I hope you’ll join me. #bced #vanpoli

❎ upgrading student washrooms and increasing availability of menstrual supplies, adding to our billion $ deferred maintenance on buildings

You know what wasn’t affected?
✅Administration budget.👇🏾

❎ adequate staffing in our district reducing our budget for teachers on call and waiting to replace resource teachers after three days of absence - adding to the burden of an existing staffing shortage and leaving kids without key learning support

There’s more👇🏾

❎ living wage for our VSB employees, accounting for .001% of our budget and affecting 200 bus drivers
❎ support for kids with disabilities, redirecting millions away from classrooms and toward administrators
❎ mental health support for kids, eliminating 9 staff from Safe & Caring Schools Team 👇🏾