LGBT supporters plan big turnout at board meeting

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This article was published 22/11/2023 (720 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mountain View School Division (MVSD) will have a full house at its board of trustees meeting next week.

Supporters of Dauphin’s local 2SLGBTQIA+ community intend to respond to prior discussions of trustees around parental rights and a possible pronoun policy and a recent delegation calling for a ban on books, vaccines and contraceptives.

One parent, who asked not to be named to protect her children’s identities, said there is a growing group of concerned parents who are disappointed more cannot attend the in-person meeting and want the school board to move it to a bigger venue.

“There’s a lot of people that want to attend, and the school board is just saying, nope. Once the boardroom is full, the boardroom is full, and everyone will have to join online. There are a lot of us — professionals, business owners, parents and community members. Everyone is saying no — move to a bigger venue. (The MVSD school board) does that all the time for meetings,” said the parent.

MVSD posted an “update” on its website Tuesday: “We have now reached capacity in the public gallery for the Nov. 27th Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees and will no longer be accepting registrations for in-person attendance. Please join us online at www.mvsd.ca — the link to the meeting will be posted on our website on Monday, Nov. 27th.”

Forty people registered to watch the meeting in person — the maximum number of gallery seats in the room — and two delegations will be present.

The full capacity may be in response to a string of discussions and delegations that have been happening at the MVSD board table since early summer. At their Oct. 23 meeting, the trustees discussed the possibility of developing a pronoun policy. That issue has been sent to the policy committee for further discussion. In June, according to the parent, some trustees discussed banning certain books from school libraries in the division.

Most recently, Dauphin grandmother Lorlie Engbrecht presented her ideas at the Nov. 13 school board meeting. Engbrecht told the board she was in favour of removing 2SLGBTQIA+ materials and urged the division to adopt a pronoun policy, eliminate school vaccines and ensure no contraceptives are handed out by schools.

The MVSD school board meetings are livestreamed on the division’s website and are not available to view later. Some Dauphin community members, like retired teacher Cam Bennet, have started recording the meetings on their own and posting them to social media.

“I wanted people to see it as a public meeting — it can be attended by the public and there should be nothing to hide. I just wanted to ensure that people knew what was happening,” said Bennet, who posted the Nov. 13 meeting on his YouTube channel.

What’s happening is the school board conversations are making some community members uncomfortable. Emily Alexander, a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Dauphin, said they are alarmed at the recent discussions but are too upset to attend the next school board meeting.

“I had been asked to join the (2SLGBTQIA+ support group), but I’m not. To be honest, I know myself and I’m going to get worked up. And I don’t want to bring down the seriousness of it by like getting upset in the moment, because it’s so close to home,” Alexander said, adding instead they wrote a letter to the MVSD in response to the latest school board delegation.

MVSD school board chairperson Gabe Mercier said there is currently no pronoun policy being developed. The issue brought up at the Oct. 13 board meeting was sent to a policy committee for further discussion. He said the school board is interested in hearing from all sides of the current issues being presented.

“I can ensure that we are following the guidelines and that everyone is heard. And I will denounce any off-colour remarks, any remarks that are bigoted. While we do give people the opportunity to state their views, they have to be respectful,” said Mercier. The chairperson also said the board is currently talking about school vaccines and when and how parents should be notified.

Dandy Decipher, a former educator in the MVSD, said he is concerned that the outspoken community members who are asking for books bans and pronoun policies may be hurting young ones in their own families.

“There’s just broadly a lot of pushback lately and it makes those people feel more comfortable expressing some pretty awful viewpoints. One of the things that is most upsetting to me about that is knowing that, statistically, some of those same people probably have children in their own lives who are probably queer. Seeing the adults in their life express these views can be causing harm as a result,” Decipher said.

Bennet said he is hoping the MVSD school board moves on from these topics that also plagued the Brandon school board earlier this year.

“This has played out elsewhere. The board in Brandon came out with the decision (against a book ban) that was by all accounts what the majority of Brandon supported, and I agree with, and here we have the similar situation that is now a local issue. There are so many things that we could be discussing here that are in school divisions,” Bennet said.

“The Province of Saskatchewan has come up with this pronoun policy. And to circumvent the Canadian Charter of Rights they’ve had to use the notwithstanding clause. I don’t see how a small-town school division can get around the same Charter of Rights without a notwithstanding clause in their power. It just seems to me that this is something that is outside of the scope of their power.”

The next Mountain View School Division board of trustees meeting is Monday, Nov. 27 at 7 p.m. at the MVSD administration office in Dauphin.

» khenderson@brandonsun.com