Vernon School Board Chair Mark Olsen.
Image Credit: Contributed
January 23, 2024 - 1:15 PM
The Vernon school board is closing meetings to the public indefinitely after dealing with abuse from anti-SOGI protesters.
Parents and taxpayers are now banned from physically attending Board of Education Meeting meetings, the next of which is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, Jan. 24.
“At our last Regular Board Meeting, members of the public disrupted our meeting,” board Chair Mark Olsen said in an email to iNFOnews.ca. “They loudly verbally abused staff and other people present, shouting words like 'coward', 'traitor' and other more offensive words that I don't want to repeat. It is not acceptable for anybody to be the subject of such verbal abuse. Students, staff, parents and other community members have expressed concerns for their own personal safety.”
A group called StandUp Vernon disrupted the Dec. 13 board meeting with an anti-SOGI rant that resulted in trustees walking out and the police were called.
READ MORE: IN VIDEO: Vernon school board meeting disrupted and shut down by protesters
The agenda for the meeting now carries the message, highlighted in a bright yellow box: “The public may attend the Jan. 24, 2024 Regular Board Meeting via live stream only. The public will not be able to attend the meeting in person. Appropriate questions and comments on agenda items will be accepted virtually at the Public Communication section of the meeting.”
The School Act, in Section 69, does allow persons other than trustees to be excluded from a meeting if, “in the opinion of the board, the public interest so requires.”
The act does not provide any reasons on why the public can be excluded or what the process is for a board to decide to exclude them.
“The decision was made through consultation with the board chair, vice chair, BC School Trustee's Association, the RCMP and school district staff, prior to the agenda being drafted and published,” Adrian Johnson, the district’s secretary-treasurer said in an email to iNFOnews.ca.
“We are responding to these concerns expressed about safety,” Olsen wrote in the email. “We will stream the meeting live over Zoom so we can conduct our business in public without posing a risk to our staff. This is consistent with advice from the RCMP.”
At this point, the in-person ban is indefinite.
“The board will revert to its practice of conducting board meetings with the public able to observe in-person as soon as we feel it is safe to do so,” Olsen wrote.
The meeting can be viewed here.
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