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A FORMAL INVITATION: Susan, I believe Trustee Alison McVeigh does protest too much methinks! I also invite her formally to counter your arguments on LFP as well this one time or even on an ongoing basis. This EDITOR will promise her an unencumbered and uneditorialized (that means yours truly stays neutral) respectful column as she wishes.
The arguing points would then be between both of you and the reading public only. I would bet she won't accept this though as its too great an opportunity! Great opportunity lost for her and the taxpaying community though for a real, valid & pertinent point - counterpoint discussion. The public would respect this indeed.
Thanks to Susan, LFP is the read venue of choice (and still growing exponentially) for the real story behind the story on Langley School Board politics ins & outs. Respectfully E-mail this EDITOR in all strictest confidence if you so desire to do so. Alison, A great opportunity to set the record straight from your point of view and most importantly for your voting taxpayers to understand and measure independently differring points of view.
Didnt the school district just promise $3million to the township toward their new rec centre. How can they spend education dollars that way? Or is this tit for tat because the township has to spend all that money for sidewalks, shoulders and a new roundabout at 216 and 50 after the school district insisted that moving the fundies there wouldnt cause any traffic problems. These guys just arent too bright.
Her problem is all summarised in her speech when she says - "this is a business we are in charge of overseeing and guiding". Treating education as a business is in my opinion her singular focus in her speech where she mentioned business upteen times.
Not once in her speech did she say anything I heard about learning outcomes. This is not a factory or a business in my opinion!
Sadly some obviously think this is a kids factiory to simply push them through the system. The more consolidated the better the cost to output ratio will be! What's the next step? Moving these Langley kids factories to Mexico where there is cheaper labor?
The real frustration is that if the school district had only listened to the parents at all in the 'consultation' process, they would have anticipated lots of these problems. The parents knew that the schools would be far over capacity but the district wouldn't listen. We have kids in K-5 schools, in a choice program who aren't from this catchment. Supposing that they wanted to go to the middle school, they would have to come after all the regular encatchment kids. The school is now confirming that they don't have the capacity to even handle them. So what about these 'left over' students? Are they just cut loose now? There is no doubt that the district is banking on lots of us leaving the district. It may be time to ask for a financial incentive for those willing to go out of district. It would be cheaper for Langley to throw maybe $1000 at each student who is willing to get their education elsewhere than to try to expand capacities in a hurry to make room for them.
To make matters worse, the school administrators have not even been informed about the parent and student concerns that were voiced over all these months. 'Oh, you are worried about crossing 208th Street? We didn't know that - haven't even spoken to the city.'
For all those who doubted us when we said that the district didn't really care about our concerns - you are about to get your proof.
Susan wrote; This is when two trustees donned T-shirts with the numbers 4-2-3. I did not know how to read that - whether they were trying to be funny or in some strange way showing support to Murrayville parents. A 4-3 split vote on the closure of Murrayville Elementary - not surprising.
Keith replies: I asked trustee Cody about this. She Stated 4-2-3 means "four to three" - which, as we know, is the invariable vote split whenever any vote related to configuration comes up.
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