Parent engagement was a recurring theme at a trustee-candidate forum hosted by the district parent advisory council (DPAC) Wednesday.
About 50 audience members showed up at Stoney Creek Elementary to watch 11 candidates field questions submitted by parents to DPAC ahead of the meeting.
Burnaby First Coalition candidate Ben Seebaran led off the debate on parent engagement, saying it is the board’s responsibility to find out the community’s priorities before making decisions.
“That is not done to a satisfactory level,” he said, citing the board’s recent acceptance of corporate funding from Chevron without community consultation.
He also pointed back to the 2011 anti-homophobia policy, which he said was passed without adequate parent input.
BCA incumbent Ron Burton shot back while fielding an unrelated question, saying the board had extended the period of consultation in 2011 for Policy 5.45, and added that his opponents didn’t “seem to have any compunction about telling the truth.”
Fellow BCA incumbent Larry Hayes maintained the current board does a “very good job” engaging parents.
“We do a lot of work in collaborating with our parents to ensure that they are involved, social media, I rely mainly on email and personal phone calls and visits to communicate with our parent group,” he said.
Later in the meeting, BFC candidate Janice Beecroft called Hayes out on the claim.
“No disrespect to Mr. Hayes, but Mr. Hayes has never been seen at one of my PACs in 15 years,” she said.
If elected, Beecroft said she would engage parents by visiting PACs and schools and talking to parents.
“I’m hear to tell you that that’s not happening,” she said.
As an example, she cited a costly hot-lunch program the district put in place at her child’s school without any consultation with parents.
BCA incumbent Harman Pandher said he had been dismayed by Beecroft’s opposition to the program.
“If she doesn’t want that program in her neighbourhood school, what can we expect for our students in the rest of Burnaby,” he said.
Pandher stressed social media as a way to engage parents.
“If we put ourselves out there, we hear the concerns of the community,” he said.
BFC candidate Heather Leung stressed the role of parents as the primary decision makers in the education of their children and the need to empower them.
“When I’m elected, I will open my availability to the parents,’ she said.
The theme of parent engagement resonated with parents in the audience.
Eric Mulholland, a former 10-year DPAC member, said the current board has done well on the issue compared to other boards around the province.
“I got to know the board and how it works here,” he said, “and I do agree that the school board in Burnaby has a pretty good relationship with parents and a pretty good relationship with DPAC.”
Other parents in the small crowd disagreed.
Inman Elementary DPAC rep Heidi Cogan said she voted for a party slate last municipal election but won’t this time around.
“Since the last election, I now have kids in the school district,” she said, “and being at DPAC meetings, I now see who is at the meetings and what they’re saying or if they’re just playing with their iPhones.”
The incumbents’ claims that parent engagement is just fine in the district, didn’t ring true for Alpha Secondary PAC member Elizabeth Cheung either.
“I was involved in my son’s elementary school PAC; I didn’t see any of them,” she said. “I’m involved on the PAC at the high school; I didn’t see any of them, so I don’t know who they’re talking to when they say, ‘Oh, when we talked to parents.’ How are they talking to parents? I don’t know.”
Cheung said she wouldn’t be voting for a slate either.
“I don’t like a one-party system,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s very good for the democratic system. That’s why I came out because I wanted to hear. I want to make an informed choice. Who are these people? I don’t want to just blindly give them my vote.”
Moscrop Secondary parent Joy Jin also enjoy the open debate at the meeting.
“Education is so important,” she said. “We need to be open to hear different kind of voices and also have some creative kind of innovation, ideas on that.”
Gwilyn Timmers, a kindergarten parent new to Burnaby politics, called the scene “very colourful” compared to other places she’s voted.
“I have no experience with these parties or anything,” she said, “so I came trying to understand what is BCA, what is Burnaby First. I do feel like I have a bit of a better understanding.”
She said her own attempts to get in touch with candidates using their generic party email address had been unsuccessful.
She had emailed them to ask which side of the recent teacher labour dispute they had been on.
“Nobody wrote back except (independent) Elias (Ishak),” she said, “and frankly, I’m going to vote for Elias.”
DPAC Jen Mezei, said parent organizers intentionally attempted to de-emphasize party politics at the all-trustee meeting.
“It’s not about slates,” she said. “It’s about individuals, and it’s about how are you going to represent us as an individual on the board of trustees.”
