NPA school board hopefuls expressed regret about missing an all candidates debate last week at a near-comical press conference today.
On Nov. 6, the Non-Partisan Association drew criticism from some teachers and parents for skipping a debate hosted by the District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) at Bayview School.
NPA school board candidate Heather Holden said there was no time to fit the event into the party’s busy schedule. “We have at least five things going on every night,” she said.
Holden added shortly after: “It was regrettable that nobody was there to represent us.”
Coalition of Progressive Electors school board candidate Bill Bargeman – who attended the press conference as an observer – said the NPA missed one of the only all candidates debates in the municipal campaign.
“I find it incredibly disrespectful,” Bargeman said. “It had nothing to do with conflicts, they just didn’t show up.”
NPA school board incumbent Carol Gibson said the format of the debate gave COPE and Vision Vancouver school board candidates – who are running on a shared slate – more speaking time than the NPA.
“COPE and Vision each got to have a response and we only got one,” Gibson said. “In that sense, the process was not fair.”
Gibson said the NPA decided not to participate after the debate’s hosts declined a request to change the rules. “We drew a line in the sand,” she said. “Maybe it was the wrong line.”
The discussion took place during an NPA press conference about the party’s school board platform that at times bordered on comical.
As the candidates spoke about the need for fiscal responsibility, parental involvement and school safety, English secondary school teacher Shelley Sullivan held a sign that read “10,000 overcrowded classes; when will they learn?” above their heads.
NPA media liaison Michael Meneer opened up a red umbrella with the party’s insignia to block the sign from view. When Sullivan moved out of Meneer’s reach, several NPA candidates opened their own umbrellas, despite a conspicuous lack of rain.
NPA school board chair Clarence Hansen expressed annoyance at the protester.
“I think it’s really quite pathetic what were seeing here today,” he said.
Sullivan belongs to the Vancouver Secondary Teacher's Association, a local union that recently endorsed eight COPE and Vision school board candidates. She said she's not connected to either party's campaign.
Geoff Dembicki is a staff reporter for the Hook.
Debate Unfairness
I've been to several all-candidate debates, and agree with Carol Gibson that the format was always unfair. The Vision slate found it "fair" to segment their slate into 3: Vision, COPE and Greens. So, at every debate, Vision was allowed to have 2-3 people answer a question, and the NPA and all other slates were only allowed 1 person each.
This was noticed by many people who attended the debates, too, and who also thought it was unbalanced and unfair to the other candidates.
Clearly, Vision/COPE/Green isn't as united as they want you to think they are.
LOL! Check Your Facts Monte!
In fact the Vancouver Secondary School Teachers Associaion is on record and most pointedly DID NOT back Vision School Board Sharon Gregson. Their repudiation of Gregson appeared in the Vancouver Sun last month.
Gregson has the distinction of being on the record as endorsing and encouraging the right to carry concealed weapons.
Obviously, not a popular stand, for anyone who remembers places like L'Ecole Polytequnique or Littleton....
Fairness has nothing to do with no attendance
thu: What's "fair" about not attending an all candidates meeting and depriving voters of the opportunity to hear from those who aspire to represent us all in government?
I've been to the Van Tech and Bayview *trustee* all candidates forums and can say that the amount of time the NPA candidates had to address topics was never an issue.
At Van Tech their answers tended to be shorter; in some cases the forum moderator reminded them they had more time.
What was an issue was knowledge. While incumbent Ken Denike could hold his own, the new candidates either a) avoided taking the microphone to answer questions (Denike was seen several times trying to urge them to) and or b) provided generally insufficient answers or in some cases provided answers which would be considered wrong-headed by any party (I'm thinking of Le Gallais in particular).
At least one of the new NPA candidates by way of excuse said, paraphrased "I'm sorry I can't provide you with more detail but we are new".
Unfortunately for them those opposing them, new or not, all had substantive comments to make on virtually every topic.
Based on that night's performance, I wasn't totally surprised to see them pull out of Bayview.
If candidates are running for office they have an obligation to get out in front of their constituents and key stakeholders. I can't think of a group of more committed stakeholders than a bunch of parents who show up on a rainy cold night at Bayview only to find that one party pulled every one of its eight candidates. That's disrespectful behaviour, not only showing disrespect for parents and other stakeholders but contempt for democracy itself.
But will they show up on Thursday...
Forgot to mention:
Think City is sponsoring an event at Laura Secord school tomorrow evening - 7pm.
http://mikewatkins.ca/2008/11/13/think-city-school-forum-thursday/
Will the NPA show up? Rumours are they will (and after today's press conference disaster one suspects they have no choice). Will non-incumbent candidates attend, or have they all been banished to sit in the corner?
Debate Unfairness?
Sorry, I don't belong to the Greens. And I'm not a member of Vision, either. So, you think I should wait until the NPA candidate answers my question, and then be done with it? Why?
If there were twenty-seven civic factions, would it be OK for a debate between the NPA and a spokesperson for the other twenty-six others?
No.
You're just one of a number of parties, or lines, or factions. You can't claim special status as being Us opposed to All Who Aren't Us.
Plurality. Get used to it.
Democracy a messy business
Indeed. At Bayview one of the two independent candidates showed up and was afforded time to speak, even though the candidate quite clearly knew virtually nothing about the position he was running for and tortured all present with his answers and comments.
As someone sitting beside me wisely remarked: such is the price of democracy.
"Most qualified"???
The NPA is claiming that this is the "most qualified" slate for school board ever (Gee, I guess that's a bit of a slap in the face for the people who ran for NPA last time). But these "qualifications" don't seem to include any knowledge of the NPA's record.
At the Van Tech all-candidates meeting where some of the NPA candidates did show up, and where non-incumbent NPA candidates actually spoke, I was surprised at the lack of knowledge about the current realities of Vancouver public schools.
Have the incumbent NPA trustees not advised their party's novice candidates on what has happened in Vancouver schools under their watch?
The NPA candidates on stage at Van Tech who were running for the first time did not seem to know about the 1000s of classes in Vancouver over the legal class size and class composition limits, about the lack of a comprehensive recycling program in Vancouver schools, about the cuts that the NPA board has made to ESL and special needs support to students, or about the decline in teacher-librarians in the district.
For instance, NPA candidate Eileen Le Gallais suggested last that Vancouver's class size and class composition issues could be solved by dispatching student volunteers into classrooms - which is hardly the solution to such a serious problem. Parents and the public expect qualified teachers and trained support staff to be providing ESL instruction and services to students with special needs. Volunteers are welcome, where appropriate, but they are hardly a replacement for the education services students in Vancouver so desperately needed.
These special education services include the need for additional speech-language pathologists, counsellors, teacher psychologists, and hearing specialists. But the NPA-majority Board has failed to put a plan in place to recruit and retain people into these important roles, and is losing many of them to private practice where they can earn more. Meanwhile, case loads are untenable for the individuals who continue in those roles, and children sit on long waitlists to be assessed and to receive direct service. Vancouver schools need more Reading Recovery and Orton-Gillingham support services as well.
Eileen Le Gallais also expressed her belief in the importance in school libraries, seemingly ignorant that Vancouver schools under the NPA-majority school board have continued to lose their full-time teacher librarians. Did she have no knowledge about the record of the incumbent NPA school trustees who have allowed continued cuts to ESL, special education, and library support to schools?
I feel sympathy for new NPA candidate like Sophia Woo who is making a genuine, earnest effort to get to know the issues facing Vancouver right now, and has taken the time to answer questions from teachers about her positions. And yet, advance polls have already occurred in Vancouver, and the NPA has only now released their school board platform.
It is time for a new school board.
Out of Touch
Perhaps one of the five things the NPA School Board candidates were doing that evening was being briefed by NPA brass on the scandal at City Hall, advised how to deal with media should they be questioned, and generally told only what they need to know. Meanwhile, the real life concerns of those who will decide their fate are left unheard, unrecognized and dismissed by Heather Holden in what appears a "too bad but who really cares anyway" tone.
This is what elitism looks like, citizens.
What's pathetic ...
What's pathetic is the NPA's record at the Vancouver Board of Eduction. The real reason they won't go to debates is that they can't defend what they've done for the past three years. If Hansen disputed the sign being held up by the teacher, then he should have given reasons why it wasn't correct.
Hansen and his NPA trustees have put their stamp of approval on budget after budget that has cut teachers, increased class sizes beyond acceptable limits, and added management positions. Does that work for kids and parents? I don't think so.
Quelle surprise...
Busy parents at the District and local Parent Advisory Committees went to the trouble of arranging two meetings to give candidates the opportunity to state their case. Busy parents & citizens gave up their time to hear what the candidates had to say. It was the height of discourtesy and arrogance for NPA candidates to not show up at Bayview - especially with virtually no notice.
COPE, Vision and NPA are the parties currently represented on the Vancouver School Board. Each of the three has their own unique platform. It's nonsensical for the NPA to suggest that COPE should speak for Vision's platform or vice versa and they know it. One can only presume that after the newbies' reportedly poor performance the previous night, the NPA decided to pull a "Palin" and muzzle 'em.
I dashed home from a business trip to make dinner & supervise homework, off to my child's concert recital and then left that early to make the Bayview meeting. There would have been plenty of time for NPA to speak. The moderator often allowed COPE or VIsion candidates to speak a second or third time to fill the gaps.
Many of the questions related to concerns about leadership, accountability and transparency under the current NPA board. Their absence spoke volumes about the legitimacy of those concerns.