Cariboo-Chilcotin Teachers’ Association (CCTA) president Murray Helmer says the
School District #27 (SD27) trustees’ position that the concerns expressed by him in his Oct. 4 press release had “not been communicated with the board other than through the media” is not the case.
In an Oct. 6 open letter to the board, he states “…to suggest that the CCTA made no effort to raise our financial concerns with the Board directly is simply untrue,” because “the financial concerns expressed by the CCTA have also been brought to the board on a number of occasions.”
Helmer also refers to his Sept. 15 letter to SD27 chair Tanya Guenther regarding the “interim superintendent situation.”
Her reply, the same day, indicates she was “forwarding my letter to District staff to be included with the board’s correspondence,” he says, adding no further communication has arisen from the trustees.
Now, Helmer says Guenther’s recent response in the Free Press that the board has communication protocols to address concerns and issues with the board – and her expressing (the board’s) hope the CCTA brings these concerns to the board via its “regularly scheduled liaison meetings,” so the trustees can address them – points to a fruitless process that doesn’t elicit any response.
On Oct. 11, he attended the regular consultative liaison meeting – a committee made up of three SD27 trustees (but not Guenther) and three CCTA members – to find an unexpected group at the table, he adds.
Along with the committee’s three trustees, Guenther, superintendent Mark Wintjes, assistant superintendent Harj Manhas, and two human resources staff members were also in attendance, he explains.
Despite the larger contingent of trustees and staff, Helmer says there was no response from the SD27 trustees or administration to an “important safety issue” on the committee’s agenda to discuss.
Helmer notes he had asked trustees about the “status of a safety issue the CCTA highlighted last spring,” requesting updates to its threat protocol, and was concerned to hear the protocol is in place in some schools – but hasn’t yet been updated for any in its South End schools.
These concerns were highlighted when he saw no evidence of this happening at a recent incident at a Williams Lake school involving a threat made on Facebook – which he says “eventually was intercepted” by the RCMP.
Meanwhile, the board chair presented the board’s SD27 Communication Processes backgrounder document to CCTA members on the committee, he adds.
In a letter to Guenther the next day (Oct. 12), Helmer states that while he had hoped
to hear the trustees address some of the concerns CCTA members have brought forward recently, instead the teachers’ input into issues “falls into a void, where it seldom, if ever, resurfaces. Subsequent requests for clarification or information have typically been ignored, he adds
The backgrounder Guenther presented to them “falls short of meeting the board’s
stated objective of fostering two-way communication with its employees, partner groups, and the community….”, he says.
