VSB brings in new capital plan, bullying policy

As schools shut down for the summer, the Vancouver School Board passed a few new policies that I thought were worth commenting on.
The first is a new policy and regulation and bullying and workplace harassment. They are updates on previous policies, with new clarifications after there were findings of bullying of staff by trustees last year. Those trustees were fired by the provincial government for failing to pass a balanced budget, not for bullying, but the bullying allegations and findings happened around the same time.
I wrote about the findings of bullying here.
So now the official trustee, Dianne Turner, appointed by the provincial government to replace the fired trustees, has approved updated policies to try to prevent anything similar happening again.
The policy defines personal harassment, which includes bullying, as “any inappropriate conduct, comment, display, action, or gesture directed at another that a reasonable person knows or ought to know would have the effect of creating an intimidating, humiliating, hostile, or offensive work environment. To constitute Personal Harassment there must be: a. repeated conduct, comments, displays, actions or gestures; or b. a single serious occurrence that has a lasting, harmful effect on a person.”
What I like about the policy is that it calls for a person who thinks they have been bullied or harassed to first talk to the person who they think bullied them.
“The trustee who believes a violation has occurred will engage in an individual private conversation with the trustee affected,” the policy reads. “Failing resolution through the private conversation the parties will engage the Board Chair, Vice-Chair or designate to gain resolution. If the concern is with the Board Chairperson, the concern should be raised with the Vice-Chairperson.”
While the policy recognizes that conciliatory measures may not be appropriate, at least the policy starts with that.
I like this because it is always more empowering and a better solution when two people in conflict can work it out amongst themselves, particularly for the person who feels like they are being bullied.
The second item of interest is the district’s new capital plan, which recognizes that more than half of VSB schools still need seismic upgrading and that in order to get that done, there will have to be five to seven schools completed each year to meet the 2030 deadline.
Three schools have been closed: Henderson Annex, Laurier Annex and Maquinna Annex. But even with those, capacity utilization fell slightly last year, due to declining enrolment, the report says.
The new capital plan does not mention school closures and instead focuses on building smaller, new schools to replace schools that need seismic upgrades. To me, that sounds very much like what the elected trustees wanted before the government imposed a 95-per-cent capacity utilization requirement on them, which they later removed.
Building smaller schools will save money in maintenance and energy costs and will also “allow the district to build better business cases for new schools required in growth areas.” The capital plan calls for one new school to be built each year in areas like downtown or south False Creek, where the numbers of kids are growing.
It’s an ambitious plan and whether it gets implemented or not will likely depend on what happens with the provincial government.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com