A new start for the school board, with some old baggage
Plus: Damn, we gotta worry about coyotes now? And a bear blows bubbles
A sad, busy news day in Prince George yesterday. It started with a fatal helicopter crash near Purden Lake (this story has all the details I’m aware of) and was followed up by a cryptic post from the city of Prince George:
A wildlife concern, you say? How very specific. Fortunately, more details soon emerged:
The “urban coyote” had, in fact, attacked four people:
The B.C. Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS) says all four attacks happened between 3:45 a.m. PT and 4:30 a.m. PT, on Sept. 26 near Connaught Hill and Parkwood. Three of the four injured were taken to hospital. All four of those attacked are homeless, the BCCOS says.
I don’t really remember coyote attacks being a thing but this is the second incident I’m aware of this year.
One weird thing I found when looking to social media for more information about both the helicopter crash and “wildlife concern” is that ever since Facebook stopped allowing people to post links to news sites, it’s just full of people posting screenshots of news sites and copying the text over. Plus ça change.
I want to be this bear, blissfully blowing bubbles
Let’s take a little cleanse courtesy this video sent to me by Susan Gray:
She writes:
A bear blowing bubbles in our water feature meant for the birds. He spent over an hour then walked away.
A new start for the school board, with some old baggage
I feel like I should get this out of the way from the start: The school board is functioning. At yesterday’s meeting they passed policy, sometimes unanimously, and heard they were running an increased budget surprlus which, really, is the core function of the school board: To manage the money (as well as things like catchment areas, bus contracts, etc). Issues around curriculum are eye-catching, including to me, but are not the bulk of the work the school board actually does. A lot of it is going through paperwork, making sure I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed and that is the vast, vast majority of what they did yesterday when they had a full board meeting for the first time since this past spring’s byelectoins.
But: The politics are there. They were present outside the meeting where about 30 people were still holding signs and chanting about sex and gender lessons in the classroom. They were present in the fact there was security both outside the school district office monitoring these protests, and in the building itself as the meeting was underway. And they were present at several points throughout the first portion of the meeting, which I attended in person because, lol:
(For those just joining us, the board successfully streamed their meetings live online for several years but stopped back in March. I wrote about the pros and cons of this decision here).
Anyways, in case you haven’t been following along the basic tension at school board right now is the chair, Rachael Weber, has a history of posting things to social media indicating she has been taken in by the culture wars, warning about wokeness and sterilizing children and vaccine passport microchip implants. She has also made comments at school board meetings that have put her at odds with the local teacher’s union, thanking one parent/failed school board candidate for a presentation he gave to council criticizing the teaching of gender diversity in the classroom.
Amidst all this, the board also fired the former superintendent without providing an explanation, which was followed by two school board trustees resigning, which was followed by two new trustees joining the board, both of whom ran on a platform of governance and policy but which might also be described as “woke” by the people who use that sort of language, given that their campaigns included marching in the Pride parade and explicit support for SOGI policies (more about SOGI here). Oh, also Weber has now been named as the person who will run for the provincial B.C. Conservative party in the next election, and that party has adopted as policy opposition to SOGI in the classroom.
Which brings us to last night when, again I want to emphasize, the school board did the work of a school board — but, as my post title implies, some of this baggage did come up. The first moment was when new school board trustee Sarah Holland wanted to add an agenda item to the night’s meetings in which Weber would be asked how she planned to “manage the conflicts inherent in serving on the board and running for MLA” (for the record, you are completely allowed to run for MLA while being elected to local office — in fact, you can SERVE as an elected official at a local and a provincial level at the same time, if you could somehow find the time). The motion was seconded by Shar McCrory and supported by Erica McLean but was not by Weber, Cory Antrim or Craig Brennan so with a 50-50 split was defeated (trustee Bob Thompson, who represents the Robson Valley, strolled into the room a few minutes after this vote happened).
This was then followed by a presentation from Paula Bass, president of CUPE 3742 (the union representing school support workers) which was basically entirely focused on remarks Weber had made at a meeting earlier this month on diversity. I will be honest, I didn’t fully catch what Weber’s remarks were according to Bass, but they seemed to be along the lines of everyone being diverse or diversity being for everyone and Bass saying there are specific people who are actually targeted for being different and it’s not just a boilerplate issue. So there was that.
Then came Prince George District Teacher’s Association Daryl Beauregard who said he was interested in a fresh start this year (I assume, as a longtime teacher, he adheres to the calendar in which September is the start of a new year). But, he said, he is a little concerned that Weber is running for a provincial party whose platform runs in opposition to the values espoused by the school board itself, at which point Weber cut in to tell him to keep his remarks focused on district policy. Here, Beauregard distributed and read out district policy around inclusiveness in the classroom, including recognizing gender diversity, and telling the board that his members are tired of the public yelling at them about this stuff when it is the explicit policy that the board has adopted for the district and he would like the trustees to either start publicly supporting these policies or, if they disagree with them, start changing them, rather than leaving it for teachers to ‘take it on the chin’ when they adhere to the rules set in place for them. So we’ll see how that goes.
Quick news:
Let’s talk about downtown: Yesterday, I noticed that there was a split at council over whether to provide financial support to businesses impacted by the explosion. The Citizen wrote more about that debate here and here is a Reddit thread from a downtown business owner who does not qualify for that fund explaining their concerns, among them, the fact they have had to spend a lot of money dealing with damages and has not received compensation, and there are others likes them. Here’s another business owner talking about the problem he’s facing. And another.
I totally forgot to mention this but when he was in Ottawa, Premier David Eby gave a ‘fireside chat’ at the Broadbent Institute and mentioned Prince George like three times, mostly in the context of the shift to green energy and the various hydrogen projects in the works here. They happen when he is asked about the environment, about 25 minutes into this video.
Prince George has been added to the B.C. Bird Trail, a tourism initiative to help visitors and locals alike learn more about the birds in the region and where you can find them.
It’s also got an itinerary on Gardens British Columbia, a similar initiative oriented around, well, you can probably guess based on the name.
Northern Health has plans to get all of its acute care sites hooked up to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites as a backup communications plan should phone or cell lines go out due to, say, a beaver.
The Prince George Conservatory has added a composer-in-residence who will be giving workshops and writing an original piece of music in the city.
UNBC’s Joseph Shea spoke to ABC News about how climate change is impacting the Himalayas.
Big news:
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Oh sure, bury the most important news at the end!
Sincerely,
Hungry Gatewayer