Trustee Takes Aim at School District Meeting Restrictions

A teacher who sits on one of the four Vancouver School Board standing committees says they are unable to effectively advocate for teachers at the district level because of how the board’s committee meetings are run.

As teachers can be disciplined for publicly criticizing their employer, The Tyee is not disclosing their name or their committee appointment.

During a school district standing committee meeting, where, depending on the committee, issues such as budget priorities, deferred maintenance, the future of education programming and teacher hiring strategies are examined by trustees, district staff, employee union reps and parents, “the only way I can say anything is by attaching it to a question,” the teacher said.

All questions asked must relate to the meeting agenda, which is set by the school board’s chair and vice-chair.

The VSB’s four standing committees are finance and personnel, education plan, facilities planning and policy and governance.

The purpose of the committees is to advise the board’s nine elected trustees on important decisions such as, for example, whether to close a school or sell district land.

“Anytime I would ask a question that might have a connection to money, they would say, ‘Oh, you have to ask that at the finance committee,’” the teacher said.

But getting answers isn’t guaranteed, the teacher says. For example, the teachers’ unions have been trying to get the school district to provide information on how often schools experience a “failure to fill” — in other words, when a teacher’s absence is not covered by a substitute.

When substitute teachers are not available, non-enrolling teachers such as teacher-librarians, special needs teachers and English language learning teachers are expected to fill in for absent classroom teachers. Students they assist go without that support until a substitute teacher is found or the classroom teacher returns to work.

In September, Vancouver School Board superintendent Helen McGregor told The Tyee that the term “failure to fill” is not in teachers’ collective agreements, and that the district had not had to any cancel classes or close facilities due to teacher absences the year prior.

Nonetheless, teacher shortages and “failure to fill” are common issue raised by the teachers unions when discussing their members’ working conditions, and what they’d like to see improve.

The teacher who spoke with The Tyee asked their standing committee for failure to fill data. They say they were told the question was answered by another committee.

But when the teacher tracked that response down, it turned out the district’s response hadn’t actually answered the question.

“It’s very disappointing to go to meeting after meeting where you just feel like there’s no interest in hearing what you might have to say. It doesn’t feel like an advisory committee, because for the most part, we’re not advising,” the teacher said.

Motion aims to improve district accountability

Since she was first elected to the Vancouver School Board in 2018, trustee Jennifer Reddy says she’s noticed “subtle tweaks” to the way board and standing committee meetings are run and how they accept — or don’t — stakeholder and public feedback.

That’s why Reddy, the only OneCity municipal party trustee on the board, has introduced a motion to be debated at the Nov. 25 board meeting. The aim of the motion, Reddy says, is to improve district accountability and transparency by removing certain board and committee meeting restrictions.

Some facilities planning committee meetings, scheduled for an hour, have ended in just seven minutes, she said.

“And that’s because there is no place to ask a question unless it is already on the agenda,” said Reddy, who made a video explaining her motion.

Where once there was a public, in-person gallery at standing committee meetings, now the public can only watch them online. If and when committee members break off into smaller group discussions, the livestream ends, Reddy says.

“What problem do we have that we’re trying to solve by eliminating parents from coming into the meeting?” Reddy asks.

Trustees rely on feedback from stakeholders and the public to inform their decisions, she says.

“I feel like I am not able to do my job, because nobody’s talking at these meetings,” said Reddy.

Motion details

Reddy’s motion would see the standing committee's livestreams continue regardless of group formation, and ensure questions asked and answered by committee members are included in detailed published meeting minutes.

The motion would allow both in-public and online public attendance for committee, delegation and board meetings, as well as enabling the public to ask questions about agenda items during committee and delegation meetings, and to speak to agenda items at board meetings.

Board meeting agendas conclude with a public question period. Prior to 2021, people attending meetings in person were provided with the opportunity to submit a question in writing, which were vetted by staff before being presented to the board. Now questions must be submitted online between noon of meeting day and the receipt of reports portion of the board meeting.

This “enables questions raised about operational or individual circumstances to be appropriately followed up with by staff,” a district spokesperson explained to The Tyee via email.

“While members of the public are welcome to attend board meetings, in-person attendance has been very low since the meetings were made accessible online. Questions may be summarized or grouped together.”

Board meeting agendas, which are currently published the Friday before the Monday meeting, would be published a week in advance if Reddy’s motion passes.

The Agenda Setting Committee, which is separate from the standing committees and consists of the district superintendent, secretary treasurer, board chair and vice chair, sets all the meeting agendas.

Currently, the board chair can consult with the Agenda Setting Committee on whether a proposed delegation presentation fits delegation meeting guidelines. Reddy’s motion would see the committee restricted to making agenda setting decisions only.

Standing committee members used to be able to start discussions on meeting agenda items, but currently they are limited to asking clarification questions only.

Reddy’s motion would enable committee members to approve the agenda, as well as introduce new agenda and information items and new business to agendas, and ask questions beyond clarifications.

Finally, Reddy’s motion would restrict private meetings to items outlined under board Policy 7, subsection 6.1.1 to 6.1.12, including matters pertaining to individual students and employees, for example, but excluding subsection 6.1.13, which allows for the board’s discretion to make meetings private when they discuss “such other matters as the board may decide.”

Sadie Kuehn, elected to the Vancouver School Board as a trustee in 1985, has experience both listening to public feedback as a board member, and more recently presenting to the board and standing committees on the district’s past and present anti-racism efforts.

When Kuehn was a trustee, the board went out of its way to hold public meetings in schools across the city, particularly during budget time, she says. This ensured residents knew what the board was doing, and the board could hear feedback from them.

Members of the public could present to the board, and they had the time to ask the board questions at the end of meetings, she told The Tyee.

Requiring people to sign up to speak to the board well in advance at separate delegation meetings restricts who the board will hear from, especially if they face language barriers.

“Access to the board is really critically important, and the wider and more comfortable that can be made for our population, is important,” Kuehn said, adding she thinks Reddy’s motion is “a good one.”

“In elected positions, you’re going to hear things that you don’t necessarily agree with. But that’s why you’re there.”

‘This is discouraging parents from coming forward’

The Tyee requested an interview with Victoria Jung, chair of the Vancouver School Board. She was not available by publication deadline. However in an emailed statement sent to The Tyee, Jung noted in this current board term, starting in November 2022, 175 presentations have been made at delegation meetings.

“I am proud of this board’s work to ensure our governance structures and processes are robust in meeting the needs of the communities we serve,” Jung’s statement reads.

Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council Chair Melanie Cheng said she is also frustrated with the school board’s barriers to parents presenting to the board or asking trustees questions.

Any member of the public wishing to address the board on an education topic, such as closing a school or returning police officers to schools, has been limited to presenting at public delegation meetings since 2022, before ABC Vancouver won a majority of school board seats in the fall election that year.

Chair Jung has since left ABC, leaving the party with three seats. They’re still the largest party represented on the board, which also includes two Green Party trustees, two independents and one COPE trustee, alongside OneCity’s Reddy.

Would-be delegates have to sign up at least five days in advance of the delegation meeting, and submit any slides or video presentations by the same deadline.

Your registration must “make the case for how your presentation relates to their criteria of governance and budget,” Cheng says, adding the definition of both is open to the chair’s interpretation.

Would-be presenters who don’t make a convincing argument that their topic is relevant are denied the opportunity to present.

“One of our parents wanted to speak to the new policies relating to rental fees that are being charged to parent advisory councils” that meet at district schools, Cheng said.

But they were denied. So was Cheng when she asked to present on the same topic.

The District Parent Advisory Council is supportive of Reddy’s motion. The District Parent Advisory Council executive passed their own similar motion, demanding increased accountability and transparency from the VSB, that their members will vote on Nov. 28.

The most recent public delegation meeting, held Nov. 18, was the first such meeting this school year that was not cancelled. The next scheduled delegation meeting is Jan. 20, 2025.

Reddy blames existing meeting barriers for not enough people signing up to present, resulting in cancelled delegation meetings.

“What I hear from many parents is they’ll request to speak, but are told that either their issue is operational, or that it’s too school specific, or worse, that they’ve already got a Black person coming to speak, so they don’t need more input from xyz community,” she said.

“This is discouraging parents from coming forward.”

*Story updated on Nov. 22, 2024 at 1 p.m. to correct the process through which people could submit questions during school board meetings prior to 2021.