A Vancouver high school student is taking issue with the Vancouver School Board (VSB) over what he calls a lack of transparency.
Christopher Lee criticizes the school district for secretive decision-making.
He claims that the VSB is misusing private sessions to discuss broader policy issues behind closed doors.
“Right now, what they’re doing is they’re extending it to talks about a whole range of issues just to make sure that the VSB isn’t held accountable,” Lee told 1130 NewsRadio.
He says, while public meetings are recorded, those small-group discussions are not.
“During regular meetings, during regular committee sessions, and board meetings, they can have something called small group discussions, and during those small group discussions, which change policy, they don’t live stream anything.”
The small-group discussions are originally meant for confidential matters concerning a few people.
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He recently attended a public VSB meeting to advocate for more transparency and took his call for change to social media.
“At the delegation meeting, I didn’t feel very heard,” Lee recalled.
Therefore, Lee took matters into his own hands.
“They acted very combatively toward a student, and what I did is I took that meeting and other parts of where the VSB was talking about these policies and posted it online.”
In a written statement to 1130 NewsRadio, the board defended its policy, saying that “there are times when public interest is best served by private discussion of specific issues in ‘private’ sessions.”
“The Board believes it is necessary to protect individual privacy and the Board’s own position in negotiating either collective agreements or contracts and therefore expects to go in private for issues dealing with individual students, individual employees, land, labour, litigation, or negotiation.”
High school student Lee is getting support from the District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC), the representation of caretakers in school districts across the province.
DPAC spokesperson Melanie Chang says that her organization has called for more transparency for years, especially in the Vancouver school district.
“We have taken steps in our organization to engage with other districts and parent advisory councils. By comparison, we know that Vancouver is not meeting the standards of other districts,” Chang explained.
She agrees with Lee that decisions affecting students and families are being made without public oversight.
“It is something that many people experience. Giving people opportunities to freely express their views and have open dialogue on these important issues only helps improve policy.”
Chang says that those opportunities for open dialogue with the VSB have decreased over the last years.
She congratulates Lee on his actions and encourages others to join him.
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“Very brave for speaking out against the board. I would encourage students to also share their experiences on public education,” Chang said.
“I feel that there are some significant improvements that we need to make.”
Lee and Chang are both calling for the board to live-stream all meetings and publish records of its discussions online.
The VSB counters that public meetings are live-streamed and recorded.
“These recordings are created solely to assist in preparing the official minutes, which serve as the permanent and authoritative record of Board decisions.”
“All meeting minutes can be found on our website,” the VSB said.
“Once the minutes are finalized and approved, the recording no longer holds administrative or evidentiary value and is scheduled for destruction after one year,” the VSB added.