Mountain View school board silent on trustee resignations

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This article was published 11/06/2024 (727 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DAUPHIN — More than two dozen people filled the board chambers at Mountain View School Division’s offices on Monday for the first board meeting since three trustees resigned and the superintendent was fired.

Though the board voted to accept the resignations, no discussion was held about them. Board chair Gabe Mercier said at the close of proceedings that he and his colleagues were working to respond to recent correspondence they had received.

Ahead of the meeting, the division had restricted the number of attendees to 40 people and cut off registration last week after seemingly reaching that total. Just 25 residents, two union representatives and three reporters were at the meeting, leaving several empty seats.

Several visitors in the gallery wore orange shirts bearing the “Every Child Matters” slogan in response to the harm done by residential schools while a couple of others wore rainbow Pride badges.

Outside, a group stood near the entrance to the building prior to the start of the meeting carrying signs with religious sayings like “Christ is king” and “June belongs to the sacred heart of Jesus.”

A week prior to the meeting, the board announced the dismissal of Supt. Stephen Jaddock and the resignations of Ward 1 trustees Leifa Misko and Floyd Martens and Ward 4 trustee Scott McCallum.

All of these moves happened after Ward 2 trustee Paul Coffey made a presentation against anti-racism that was itself deemed racist against Indigenous peoples by multiple groups like the Manitoba Teachers’ Society and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

That led to Education Minister Nello Altomare ordering a governance review of the division and Jaddock publicly apologizing for not interrupting Coffey’s presentation in a post that the division has since deleted from its website.

Mercier opened proceedings by expressing delight at the full house, remarking that the previous meeting had only two people in the gallery.

He warned visitors that only board members and senior administrators were allowed to speak and that any outbursts from the gallery would lead to ejections.

Around 7:45 p.m., parent Jarri Thompson stood up to interrupt proceedings, calling for the dissolution of the board and criticizing trustees’ recent actions. Mercier pointed out that she had violated the rules he had laid out and invited her to sign up as an official delegation at a future meeting, but he did not eject her.

However, in reading a report that touched on the governance review, Coffey said it had been suggested that trustees spend more time educating themselves on various issues and the Public School Act.

One of those attending the meeting was Manitoba Teachers’ Society president Nathan Martindale, who told the Sun prior to the meeting that he believed the provincial government should dissolve the board rather than allowing for byelections to fill the four current vacancies.

The province can do so by appointing a special trustee to manage the division’s affairs, at which point all trustees and administrators would be dismissed.

“A timely decision by the government is important here,” Martindale said. “That respects the communities, the teachers, the students that have been affected by events out here.”

Martindale said Coffey’s presentation was “misinformation and disinformation” as well as “racist,” and has had an impact on students of Indigenous descent and the community at large.

Several locals attending the meeting told the Sun they had come out of concern for the direction the board is heading in.

Rodney Juba, a former Dauphin city councillor, said he was looking for a broader perspective as to what the board’s plan is moving forward.

He said he would like byelections called to fill the board vacancies as soon as possible.

“I don’t feel that a board should be minus that many people, regardless of whatever situation is going on,” Juba said.

As for whether the board should be dissolved, Juba said the ongoing review process needed to be respected.

“If we rush in, you have these issues based on emotion,” he said. “There’s enough angst in the community based on all-around lack of knowledge.”

Jackie Dowhy said this was one of the few school board meetings she’d attended in her 35 years living in the Dauphin area.

The grandmother of children in the division said she’d never seen Mountain View go through these kinds of challenges before.

“I think, basically, (the board) needs to be concentrating on the kids’ education and not on some of the other sidetrack issues that have been focused on, mainly,” she said.

Thompson was one of those who spoke to the Sun before the meeting. Introducing herself as an Indigenous mother of two children in the division, she said she wanted to see the board dissolved and that she was tired of “their underhandedness.”

“I think it really came to a head back in November, when they tried to ban certain books from the schools,” she said.

She said she thought the divisions’ librarians were good enough to decide on their own whether books are appropriate for students. She added that she thought the board was violating both provincial legislation and their own policies in their treatment of some issues.

“I think that if we continue to allow them to run the way they’re running right now, it’s going to reverse all of the good work that’s been done in the communities … This message that the board is sending right now is ‘you don’t get to be yourself in the schools, you have to be as we tell you, but we’re going to pretend that we’re looking out for the greater good of the community.’”

However the board proceeds, whether byelections are run for the vacancies or if trustees are dismissed, Thompson said the community needs to get involved and make sure they know the backgrounds of those running for office and what they stand for.

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