Sieklicki resurrects book review committee issue

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This article was published 29/08/2023 (1010 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Trustee Breanna Sieklicki is still very much in favour of installing a book review committee at the Brandon School Division and put forward an unscheduled motion to that effect during Monday’s board meeting.

Sieklicki told the board that the division has lost the trust of parents in the community by allowing literature with “explicit sexual content” and “vulgar language” to be within the reach of its students.

As a result, Sieklicki said the only way to regain this collective trust of parents is to establish a more transparent process where this material is flagged by an additional organizational body and removed from shelves.

“The only thing lost in forming such a committee would be time,” she said. “I will be more than happy to give up a little more time to address the concerns of parents and to protect our children from adult content.”

This book committee idea was originally brought to the BSD school board on May 8 by former trustee Lorraine Hackenschmidt, who mostly focused on books that featured discussions around sexual health and members of the LGBTQ+ community during her presentation.

The board ultimately rejected Hackenschmidt’s proposal during a lengthy May 23 meeting, with Sieklicki being the only holdout.

That voter breakdown repeated itself on Monday, with no one from the board coming forward to second Sieklicki’s motion.

BSD chairperson Linda Ross explained that this matter had already been settled in May and there is no need to revisit it further.

“People can bring this up as long as they want, but we’ve made a decision,” trustee Duncan Ross told the Sun after the meeting. “Unless there was new information that came out, or something that brought something new to this debate, the decision’s made.”

Sieklicki tabled a second motion on Monday that aimed to create a “transparent parent policy” within the division that would allow parents and guardians to be “informed of all the activities in regard to their child or children in our division.”

“This will include but is not limited to classroom curriculum, third-party presentations and personal information,” she said. “This will allow parents to have an option to opt out if they deem something is inappropriate for their child.”

This motion also did not receive any support from the other BSD trustees on Monday.

Sieklicki’s motion comes 10 days after the Progressive Conservative government championed a similar kind of promise on the campaign trail, aiming to further emphasize “parental rights” by modifying the Public Schools Act if re-elected this fall.

Certain critics of this announcement characterized it is a blatant anti-LGBTQ+ “dog whistle,” with Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew comparing it directly to the book review committee controversy in Brandon.

Monday’s meeting at BSD headquarters on Sixth Street featured a packed house full of Sieklicki’s supporters and members of the LGBTQ+ community that believe that this book review committee initiative is bigoted in nature.

While the current administration isn’t planning to reverse its decision anytime soon, Duncan Ross told the Sun that this could change through the upcoming by-election to fill two empty seats on the board.

BSD secretary-treasurer Denis Labossiere announced during Monday’s meeting that this election will take place in either late October or early November.

“The school board elections tend not to be super high profile,” Ross said.

“But I think the last three months has made it quite a bit more high profile, and I think we’re going to see a lot more interest in this byelection than we’ve seen in school board byelections in 10 years.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com