School board fails to deal with trustee controversy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/04/2024 (782 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About a year after the Brandon School Division’s board of trustees dealt with an offensive presentation, the Mountain View School Board in Dauphin experienced its own earlier this week when one of its trustees spent 30 minutes trying to whitewash history.

But judging from the reactions of the presenters’ fellow trustees, it is clear that the MVSD board did not tackle the problem nearly as well their colleagues in Brandon.

During Monday’s meeting, Ward 2 trustee Paul Coffey played many of the greatest hits of the anti-Indigenous racism scene: defending residential schools, referring to groups by outdated and offensive language, denying the existence of white privilege and attacking land acknowledgments.

Though Coffey claimed Indigenous ancestry in his remarks, that didn’t stop a slew of criticism from coming out on Wednesday, including the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the Manitoba Teachers’ Society calling for Coffey’s removal from the board.

Gabe Mercier, the chair of the board, issued his own statement on Tuesday about the incident.

“Mountain View School Division Board of Trustees is aware of personal statements and comments during a presentation made by a single trustee during its public Board Meeting on Monday April 22, 2024,” Mercier wrote.

“Mr. Coffey was speaking as an individual and his opinions and comments were his own and possibly those of other constituents in his Ward. Mr. Coffey was not speaking on behalf of the Board.”

A further claim from Mercier that the division “stands against any type of racism while we work to fulfil the outcomes of our Indigenous Education Framework” rings a bit hollow when the statement does not specifically challenge Coffey’s remarks and none of the other trustees spoke up or challenged Coffey during his presentation.

When the Brandon School Division faced presentations and calls from some residents to ban books with 2SLGBTQIA+ content last year, confrontations between trustees, presenters and the lone trustee in favour of such a move because acrimonious enough that the majority of the board was censured in the aftermath.

But when offensive stereotypes and misconceptions about sexual health and gender identity issues were raised, multiple trustees directly and explicitly challenged those falsehoods in the moment.

For a division that less than a year prior had seen Maryland Park School rebrand a Pride day event to remove mention of the word Pride and 2SLGBTQIA+ students, that rebuke of bigotry sent a message of support to queer students in the division.

By remaining silent at the presentation, MVSD trustees sent the opposite message to its Indigenous students.

As the Governing Council of the Anishnaabe Nation in Treaty 2 Territory put it in its statement on the incident, “One must ask what is worse, Trustee Coffey’s offensive remarks or the complicit silence of others in the room.”

Our current premier, Wab Kinew, showed an example of not remaining silent while serving as opposition leader.

Shortly after being sworn in as Indigenous relations minster in July 2021, former PC MLA Alan Lagimodiere told reporters that those running the residential school system believed they were doing the right thing.

Kinew immediately interrupted the press conference, calling the remarks revisionist history and saying that Lagimodiere couldn’t defend residential schools if he wanted to work with Indigenous communities.

Some elected officials in our province have already set the standard that bigotry should be confronted, even if that person is your colleague or constituent.

A statement issued by Supt. Stephen Jaddock on Thursday is a decent start toward repairing things, especially because he apologized for not interrupting Coffey during the presentation itself.

Still, Jaddock’s statement does not name Coffey and it does not specifically say that the trustee’s remarks were racist.

So far, the division’s responses to the incident have seemed like a half-measure, acknowledging that something upsetting was said, but dancing around why those things were wrong to say and what will be done about them.

To this point, the Sun has been unable to reach Coffey, Mercier or even vice-chair Jason Gryba for comment on the situation — though Mercier said in a brief email that he’s currently out of the country on vacation.

It doesn’t appear that our colleagues at other news outlets have been able to reach trustees for comment, either.

It’s for Indigenous groups to decide whether the division has comprehensively burned its bridge with them over this issue, but we would suggest that a more credible response is warranted if Mountain View is truly serious about advancing reconciliation and maintaining those partnerships.