Vancouver School Board

Meanwhile, I'm really optimistic actually about this park board or the school board.

For the past few years, the Vancouver School Board has not had a great reputation of being particularly transparent or clear about what they're doing.

And this is like a massive overhaul of that board in a positive way.

And I think between...

It's a divided minority council on school board, but in a way that can hopefully deliver some improvements to the governance of the board.

The Vancouver Secondary Teachers Association, the high school teachers union, just had a 98% vote of non-confidence in the superintendent of Vancouver School Board.

So something's not going great in Vancouver schools, and hopefully they can at least clean that up.

One thing that we don't have results for you on is the plebiscites.

The non-response, the lack of information, lack of transparency is only leading us to speculate.

In a statement to Global News, the Vancouver School Board says we are aware of concerns regarding inappropriate online behaviour involving some grade 12 students and are taking the matter seriously.

The Churchill team is gathering information and taking appropriate steps including supporting students who may have been affected and addressing concerning behaviour.

Meantime, the VPD is also confirming it's aware of the situation at Churchill Secondary and an investigation is underway.

What's going on with that?

So to give people a brief rundown, um, in 2021, the Vancouver School Board canceled the school liaison officer program, which saw Vancouver Police Department officers stationed one per high school and working with their feeder elementary schools.

This program dates back to the 1970s.

This cancellation was after a backlash to police violence and the disproportionate impacts on Black and Indigenous communities across Canada and particularly in Vancouver.

And when they won a majority on school board, um, they did do that.

And so ABC trustees made some comments that I thought revealed the divide in, in the community pretty starkly when they voted to return the program.

So, um, Preeti Faridkot, who is a current Vancouver School Board trustee and is a candidate with ABC to be- to join the school board again, she said at the time, "I understand that police do not belong in schools." And then she added that neither do drugs and gangs.

Oh.

It, it's time for opening statements.

[upbeat music] So Kingsgate Mall opens in 1974 on land owned by the Vancouver School Board with a 99-year lease to people to develop and run the mall-

Mm

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I can say street front, I can read street front alternative on a website, but I'd love to know from you, what is street front?

Well, Streetfront's a small little alternative program out of the Vancouver School Board.

We're attached to Britannia Secondary.

So I guess we would be considered the Downtown Eastside High School.