The sa国际传媒 Conservatives’ education critic is urging the education minister to remove the Greater Victoria School Board from office and replace it with a trustee, amid an ongoing dispute over police in schools.
“For 18 months, the district’s Board of Education has refused repeated calls to collaborate with law enforcement, First Nations, and other community partners — despite strong feedback from parents and local stakeholders,” Lynne Block, MLA for West Vancouver-Capilano, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“They have made their stance clear by defying the Minister’s authority and ignoring the very community they were elected to serve.”
In late December, the Ministry of Education directed the board to co-operate more closely with law enforcement to ensure student safety, but the board has yet to comply, “disregarding parents, local governments, and other community members who overwhelmingly support restoring a relationship with police in schools,” Block said.
She noted that Education Minister Lisa Beare appointed a special advisor to help the board, at a cost of $55,000 to the district, but that advisor has now withdrawn from the process. “This is money that should have gone to benefit our students in the classroom, yet it’s been wasted on a Board unwilling to cooperate.”
And with the board warning that it is ready to go to court over the issue, “students are paying the price for this ideological standoff,” Block said.
“I’m calling on Minister Beare to remove this Board from office, appoint an official trustee under Section 172 of the School Act, restore police support in SD 61 schools, and refocus on what truly matters: educating students and ensuring their safety.”
The controversy began in 2023, when the school board opted to end its police-liaison officer program, citing the discomfort a police presence might cause for Black and Indigenous students, an issue that had been raised by sa国际传媒 human-rights commissioner Kasari Govender.
The move was opposed by police — who cited a growing problem of gang recruitment in high schools — as well as First Nations and organizations that work with youth at risk.
In response to the ongoing controversy, former Education minister Rachna Singh asked the board to provide a safety plan, but Beare rejected the plan filed in November.
She requested a new plan by Jan. 6, and appointed former Abbotsford School District superintendent Kevin Godden as a special adviser, saying failure to comply with the plan request could bring repercussions up to dismissal for the board.
On Jan. 2, the board’s call for a separate version of the safety plan limiting police involvement in schools led Godden to tell trustees that he couldn’t continue to do his job “with the integrity it was intended,” according to a board memo.
The board had produced three versions of its safety plan by the Monday deadline. Beare issued a statement after receiving the revised plans, saying work has begun to study them. “My priority continues to be student safety and I’ll have more to share when our reviews are complete,” she said.
The ministry said Godden will be submitting a report about his work with the board, police, First Nations and others at the end of the week.
Spectrum Community School PAC chair Kindree Draper said the “entrenched position” the board has taken on police liaison officers in schools runs contrary not just to the views and wishes of parents but “to every other school board in the province.”
“We had an existing structure with the police-liaison program that seemed to be really effective,” said Draper, who was previously chair of the Colquitz Middle School PAC for four years.
“Every single day you turn around there’s another story about students having conflict, either with each other or with somebody coming into the school and causing an issue.”
Beare has noted that the Greater Victoria School District is the only one of 60 in the province without some type of program for working with police in schools.
In response to a request for comment from board chair Nicole Duncan on Tuesday, the district referred the sa国际传媒 to the safety plans and a statement posted on the district website saying members of the board are confident they have been responsive to the minister’s request.
Duncan said in a December letter to the chiefs of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations — both of whom had expressed concern about the loss of police-liaison officers — that the board had no oversight of the officers or input into their activities.
“There was no mechanism to meaningfully address the activities or conduct of police, since police-liaison officers are employed by the regional police services and not the board of education.”
The Victoria Police Department declined to comment while the ministry’s review of the plans is underway, but spokesperson Cheryl Major said in a statement that Victoria Police Chief Del Manak has consistently asserted that the department is open to “a reimagined” school police-liaison officer program “and that some version of this proactive and preventative initiative is what we hoped to see in the district’s safety plans.”
“We look forward to the minister’s review, the special adviser’s report, and to hearing the next steps in this process.”
Lori Poppe, an advocate for police-liaison officers in schools and a member of the group Parents and Police Together, said about 300 more people have joined the group in just the past week, bringing the total membership to more than 2,000.
