FAQs

I am a musician myself (violin/fiddle) and the father of musicians who have studied with the excellent music teachers at Shoreline, Rockheights and Esquimalt schools. In particular, Risa McDonnell (at Rockheights) and the music team at Esquimalt threw a life-line to my son, who had struggled to connect with teachers and classmates in elementary and early middle school. Often band and strings were the only reason he agreed to go to school in the morning. I have a vested interest in advocating for the music program.

Students come to school with very different needs and interests, and a narrow focus on more traditional academic programs guarantees that we exclude children who desperately need help connecting to their peers, their teachers and the school community. This applies not only to music, but also to sports, shop, theatre and other programs that offer different ways for students to engage. I was disturbed to hear recently that Esquimalt High is not offering woodshop this year because they have been unable to find a teacher. We need to do better. 

My goal is to support all students, providing a safe space for students to explore who they are as they become the adults that they will be. However, given the ongoing controversy about SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identify) curriculum, it seems important to elaborate. 

SOGI is a Provincial Government curriculum requirement and School Districts are obligated to provide it. Any candidate who tells you otherwise is trying to lie their way to your vote. 

However, SOGI and other programs that help children understand the diversity of human experience are essential to helping students understand that their experiences, and those of their peers, are normal, at a time when life can seem confusing. SOGI is one of a broader range of programs that can help reduce conflict, address bullying and help give youth a vocabulary to understand their own experiences.  

At the same time, where a child is not at risk, students need to be encouraged to communicate with their families, who love and wish to support their children. The community needs to uphold children who choose to come out to their families and their families as they love them.

No. (It’s unfortunate that we need to answer this question in this day and age, but I do understand why several people have asked it). 

It is important that the School District and Victoria Police Department work together cooperatively to support students. Police are guests in the school, there to offer a program and build positive relationships with students. The emphasis must be on community policing, education and building relations, not law enforcement. Police are not social workers and counsellors, and officers are not a replacement for adequate funding of those supports by the Provincial government. 

Any program aimed at inviting police officers into schools must include clear learning objectives, agreements and officer training. Some students and families may not experience a police presence as safe and the program must build positive relationships going forward.

At the same time, it was completely unacceptable for the MInister of Education to dismiss the previous democratically elected School Board because she disagreed with their decision on this issue. 

The public conflict that is playing out between the current School Board and several of the District’s senior staff is disturbing. The Board has indicated that they are investigating changes made during a time when they had been replaced by the Minister of Education by an appointed Trustee, including suggesting that fraud or other inappropriate behaviour may have occurred. Senior staff have taken leave, apparently in response to the investigation.

The situation is a mess. Obviously we would want senior staff to be in their respective roles as children return to school and parents deserve an explanation about what happened. However, at this time I do not have enough information to express an informed opinion about what has happened, how the problem might be fixed, or what might come next. If elected, I want to contribute to building a team that works together to provide services for our students.

This October we will, for the first time, have the opportunity to elect a Trustee to represent Esquimalt - as opposed to the previous “at-large” system in which nine Trustees were elected by parents across the District. If you voted in the last election, you may recall the overwhelming list of thirty candidates and being asked to pick up to nine names. This time you will just pick one name from a short list of people seeking to represent Esquimalt. Click here for more information about how the Trustee Electoral Area system works. 

Of the nine current Trustees on the School Board, seven are from Victoria. Meanwhile, a resident of Esquimalt has not been elected to the Board since the 1990s. While I do believe that the Trustees under the at-large system have done their best to represent all communities in the District, I also believe that there is no substitute for a Trustee who walks his dog on our streets and whose children have been through Esquimalt Schools. A quick look at the condition of the Esquimalt catchment area schools, compared to those in other regions of the District, raises legitimate questions about whether Esquimalt students have received the same opportunities as other students. While I will strive to do what is best for all of the District’s students, it is past time to have a Trustee who lives and works in Esquimalt and who will work hard to build relations with Esquimalt families and the community. 

I am not looking forward to some of the difficult budgetary decisions that the School Board needs to make. The School District Board has limited options when it comes to setting budgets for the District. They receive funding from the Ministry of Education and have little ability to raise other funds, and cannot run a deficit. Provincially negotiated contracts define how much staff need to be paid and constrain class size and various other issues. Within those constraints, there is often not enough money to go around for the many important and educational programs that Board is offering or would like to offer. 

I plan to be innovative in finding new sources of funding and working with partners, PACs and others to free up resources to support our children, and it is still likely that I will be forced to make decisions that cut important programs or do not serve our children. When I do, I plan to ask for input from parents and teachers, to be transparent about how and why those decisions are being made and to point out that the Province needs to adequately fund our schools. But I will still feel awful about the choices - and I do worry that parents will blame me.