District protesting too much

Tracie Northway, Langley Advance - Letter to the editor
Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Dear Editor,
I was struck with two thoughts regarding the debate of who is right and who was wronged in the LTA and school district's latest conflict over pamphlets informing parents of an upcoming event called "Dialogue on debt."

The first has to do with the school district's position to go to such great lengths and publicity to stop the distribution of a relatively innocuous notice. Everything in the pamphlet had already been published in local papers or was already distributed, except for the date, time, and purpose of the event, which was to provide an opportunity for interested citizens to participate in generating solutions in moving forward - something this district should be openly doing itself.

The second thought I had was how come the school district spent an additional amount of money to post a 3 ?" x 12" notice in your paper to publicly state that they did not endorse the distribution of this notice: a notice that got distributed at hardly any schools.

I have checked pricing with your paper, and a notice of that size would cost approximately $500. Therefore, the district that is in $8.2 million debt for the past year has just spent money to defend itself after it had done so for free in your article [Mail-out sparks firestorm, Nov. 17, Langley Advance]. Who approved the notice and the spending?

I am worried that this over reaction and need to push back at every potential challenge is a symptom of the broken system we call School District No. 35.

"Thou dost protest too much" behaviours from the district's senior administration aren't demonstrating they are moving forward to improve the situation; in fact, they are making it worse by spending money on reactive notices while parents in this district are supplying photocopy paper as part of the kindergarten students' supplies.

Let's get someone in here to clean up this mess! Our children are too important to continue to be victims of this broken system.

Tracie Northway, Langley City