January 24
Fifteen joined us for all or part of this conversation with the School District 64 team, guiding the education of not only our Salt Spring youth but also those of Galiano, Saturna, Mayne, and Pender Islands with 1,500 students, nine schools, and 350 employees.
Joining us were:
- Jill Jensen – About to celebrate her first year as our Superintendent, Jill brings 34 years of experience as an educator, beginning as an English teacher in Alberta and working for nearly a quarter of a century as a BC administrator in mountain and First Nations communities.
- Tisha Boulter – Twice elected School Board Trustee as well as former Chair, Tisha brings decades of experience as a Parent Advisory Council (PAC) leader during her two children’s years in our school district.
- Jesse Guy – For the past six years Secretary/Treasurer, Jesse also brings her experience as a student, a 2020 graduate of School District 64.
- Nancy Macdonald – Another of our School District 64 Trustees, Nancy is a longtime Salt Spring resident (1982) also bringing her expertise from decades as an educator in the Gulf Islands as well as Assistant Superintendent of the Saanich School District.
After our Territorial Acknowledgement, each of our guests told us a bit about what excites and delights them. As an English major, Jill intended to teach until she decided what to do with her life. She had never expected the joy and passion she would get from her love of teaching and the magical process of educating future generations. With her grandchildren in mind, Jill is committed to creating welcoming, compassionate, and inclusive educational spaces for every child.
Despite the challenges of COVID and the closing of three schools since her election as Trustee in 2018, Tisha continues to be delighted with her role supporting students. She is especially excited about a new initiative giving student leaders a voice at the Trustee table as well as her recent training with Compassionate Systems Awareness (https://systemsawareness.org/). It is her hope that if adults in our school system can model better collaboration, understanding, kindness, compassion, and resilience, the next generation of our leaders – our students – will be better prepared to also demonstrate these essential skills.
While Jesse expressed her delight in snowdrops and her young son, she also expressed her excitement in the pleasures of being in the role of Secretary/Treasurer where she can design systems that use community assets to bring the most benefit to the community. While this may simply look like safe, clean classrooms and on-time transportation to us, to Jesse it is the demonstration of strong systems of interdependent parts that create efficient stable, but not static, systems.
Nancy, happily a French Immersion teacher in our elementary school in its early years, is delighted by her 43 years on Salt Spring and her growing brood of grandchildren. She is also excited by the incredible stories of student success (like Jesse’s) that fuel her passion for the amazing job of being a lifelong educator.
After an enjoyable time of getting to know Jill, Tisha, Jesse, and Nancy a bit better, we launched into an emotional and complex discussion of SOGI, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (https://www.sogieducation.org/). With a mission of providing educators with resources to support all sexual orientations and gender identities, we learned that SOGI is not a program but a collection of resources designed to help teachers and parents support all students, protecting their human right to be who they are and accepting diversity.
Our school district team reminded us that historically neither society – nor our schools – have been supportive enough of students in their diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. Not that many years ago, students with same sex parents were considered different and any sexual orientation other than accepted heterogeneous orientation was shamed. Kids suffered, unable to be that round peg nicely fitting into society’s predetermined round holes.
These exclusionary and judgmental patterns are changing. Our school district team knows that it is our school’s responsibility to insure the basic human right of acceptance. They also believe that the BC Ministry-supported SOGI resources (https://news.gov.bc.ca/factsheets/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-sogi-in-schools) will help students better understand and ask for support, no longer excluded and judged.
Some participants of this ASK Salt Spring gathering had markedly-different perspectives, strongly believing that resources and books approved by the district are inappropriate. They questioned our school district team for making disturbing and even graphic materials available at the high school. Why, they wondered, were youth not, also, given materials cautioning them not to make life-changing hormonal/surgical sexual decisions too soon? They questioned whether teachers and counsellors are even encouraging youngsters to make these irreversible decisions when they are simply too young.
Our guests reminded us that the school only provides resources. It is up to parents, with the support of their health practitioners, to have these key conversations with their children about the possibility of medical intervention, possibly even restricting their child’s access to some of the resources. But, we were also told that children in crisis and unable to speak honestly to their parents will be respected and listened to by school professionals. The school district is committed to creating safe inclusive spaces for all learners. The team knows too well that those that identify in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community can be the most vulnerable to anxiety and depression due to discrimination.
A complicated conversation, participants with concerns did not appear to be satisfied but left promising to continue this conversation with our guests in a more focused discussion exploring this emotional issue.
We shifted gears to discuss student enrollment numbers. Clearly declining numbers of students have forced School District 64 to make some very difficult decisions:
- Closure of Windsor House School in Vancouver (https://windsorhouseschool.org/) in 2019,
- Closure of SIMS, the middle school in 2022,
- The recent closure of Phoenix School in 2023, and
- The planned cessation of the International School in the 2025-26 school year.
The decisions are made based on two key considerations: how to best achieve student success and financial impacts on the district. Our school team is confident that these difficult closures will allow the best use of limited educational assets for the most community benefit. It was also noted that community use of SIMS has been of great benefit for many throughout the community, and that, depending upon Local Community Commission decisions, the former Phoenix Elementary School on Drake Rd may also become an important community resource.
This enrollment decline was apparent as early as 2000. Part of a trend in much of North America, the financial challenges faced by families seeking to raise children in expensive island communities contributed to this decline.
As a clear example of declines that are predicted to continue, Jesse told us that our 2025 graduating class of 130 will be replaced by only 74 kindergartners. A clearly worrisome trend, we did learn from Jesse that many students whose parents select home schooling, private schools, etc. often return to our school district during their middle and high school years, often illustrated in a slight bump in enrollment during sixth and seventh grades. When asked whether the closure of the private Centre School is expected to increase enrollments, we were told that this impact, if any, is one of many enrollment unknowns our school district team constantly ponders.
When Windsor House in Vancouver was closed in 2019, School District 64 lost 200 students. This significant loss of enrollment (and funding) triggered short-term provincial funding protection to help it recover until it had reached a sustainable enrollment. This funding protection in nearly over, another everyday concern of our school district team.
We receive approximately $8,000 for each student per year, plus additional funding for students with diverse needs and disabilities, etc. One huge expense for School District 64 is transportation, costing a whopping $1.7 million every year! This includes our buses, now as many as five electric ones (!!!), plus the water taxi contract at $1.1 million a year for the students who travel from other islands to attend high school on Salt Spring. All but $328,000 of this whopping annual total for transportation comes from funding that could be used for educational programs. We did, however, learn that, as a rural, water-connected community, we get additional funding of approximately $5 million/year to cover a variety of disproportionate costs due to supporting small rural/remote schools on smaller islands.
As our time together was quickly drawing to a close, we were given the recently released Gulf Islands School District Strategic Direction 2024-2028: (https://www.sd64.bc.ca/page/5123/strategic-direction-2024-2028). A succinct, information-rich document with significant art created by Quentin Harris in the background, these commitments were identified:
- Truth, Reparation, Restoration;
- Relationships and Belonging;
- An Ethic of Learning; and
- Integrity and Responsibility.
With appreciation, we bid farewell to our school district team, satisfied with lots of information; confident that they will engage in those important, but emotional, conversations; impressed by the passion and commitment that drives them; and looking forward to welcoming them back again soon. (Thank-you Jill, Tisha, Jesse, and Nancy!)
Want to learn more? Tisha was interviewed by CHiR.fm‘s Damian Inwood after our ASK Salt Spring gathering. Listen to this interview as well as many more at ASK Salt Spring Answered (https://open.spotify.com/show/14aIItcouBw3unc5ZtgPDL).
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