The more than 100 people who showed up at the School District of Mystery Lake trustees' regular meeting Tuesday night - nearly unanimously in opposition to the trustees' decision to fire Ryan Land as principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate - were handed a glimmer of hope by the school board.
Trustee Leslie Tucker has put an item on the agenda for the next regular board meeting which would rescind the previous board motion firing Land. "We have a motion to rescind, and if that were granted, it would achieve what you're asking," school board chair Rob Pellizzaro told the crowd.
The next regular meeting had been scheduled for March 22, but was pushed back to April 5 - still one week before the board would next normally meet on April 12 - in a resolution passed Tuesday night by trustees, with Leslie Tucker as the only trustee objecting. The reason given for this switch was that at least two trustees would be unable to make the March 22 date. "We're not trying to avoid the issue," said Pellizzaro. "I think this is something which requires some reflection."
The motion to reinstate Land will be discussed and voted upon in camera, as all personnel matters are.
Aside from that resolution and a handful of routine matters which were taken care of quickly, the three-hour meeting focused almost entirely on the decision not to extend Land's probationary contract past the end of this school year, and relieve him of his duties effective immediately - in essence firing him - which the trustees made Feb. 22 based on a recommendation from superintendent Beverly Hammond.
Two formal delegations were heard - Evan Bercier, Richard Sheppard, Averi Amyotte, and Kenneth Kolada, representing the R.D. Parker student council, and Jim Mason, Betty Landego, and Dan Murphy, representing the R.D. Parker Parent Advisory Council.
"Mr. Ryan Land should be reinstated as the principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate," began Sheppard. "Ryan Land was an inspiration to me, a lot of other students, and other semi-administrative figures - meaning teachers - at R.D. Parker Collegiate. At assemblies, Mr. Land was the first to teach about respecting your fellow man, embodied by a word which he continually presented at his assemblies: ubuntu, I am because you are."
"Mr. Land always encouraged students and teachers to show up on time, and especially for the students to be prepared and ready to learn for classes," he continued. "As principal, Mr. Land respected students at a level that no other administrative figure ever did. He never talked down to anyone."
"Land has made everybody feel equal and safe," said Bercier. "He always made time for students. He was an inspiration in school activities, and liked to get involved - he used to run up and down the basketball court whenever the athletic students needed some encouragement. I hadn't seen anything like that since I started school."
"I came in when Mr. Land came in, and my brother had told me that R.D. Parker was kind of a scary place," noted Amyotte. "He said that it'd be best for me to travel around with groups of friends, just in case. He said fights were breaking out all the time." Amyotte said that when she started Grade 9, some students were gruff or disrespectful towards others, and other students came to class high, which she found troubling.
"When Mr. Land came into the school, one of his first speeches was the ubuntu speech - I am because you are," she continued. "Me and Mr. Kolada were walking down the hallway after that speech. We were getting ready to go home, and I was talking about how riled up I was about it, and Ken was too. We heard yelling and screaming down the stairs, so we went downstairs, and we see that there's a fight breaking out. The way my mother raised me was 'do what you believe, fighting's bad, stop it at all costs' - that's exactly what ubuntu is, so as soon as I saw that, I shouted 'ubuntu, ubuntu!', I ran in and grabbed one of the girl's shoes, tried to get them apart, and kept shouting 'ubuntu, ubuntu!'. A few seconds later, I don't know the names of the men who helped me, but they helped me separate the two. It was one of the craziest things I've ever done - I didn't know them, I just knew that I didn't want that in my school. Mr. Land taught me that."
"In three years, we're now on to our fourth principal or acting principal," noted Mason, who did the bulk of the speaking for the parents. "I don't believe that provides stability. Not only have the principals change, but also the majority of the teams they have led have changed. We question how all this turnover can be good for our school, for both students and staff."
The parent group also brought with them a copy of the petition they have been gathering signatures for, which was presented to deputy education minister Gerald Farthing last week and now stands at 763 names. The petition calls for the reinstatement of Land as well as Grant Kreuger, who was demoted from vice-principal to teacher at the same time as Land's firing, and was the driving force behind bringing in R.D. Parker's aviation, technology, and mining programs, as well as asking the province to investigate the "significant turnover" in the superintendent and assistant superintendent positions at the School District of Mystery Lake and principal and vice-principal positions at R.D. Parker.
Mason also questioned why the board made their decision based solely on Hammond's recommendation, without consulting other groups. "Could you not have attended [a Parent Advisory Council meeting] and asked in general terms how we felt Mr. Land was doing and areas we felt he could improve on?" he asked the trustees.
There was also an opportunity for questions from the floor - as there is at every school board meeting - but unlike any other meeting in recent memory, the Tuesday night question session ran for nearly two hours. The audience was noticeably hostile towards the trustees when the meeting began, but that raucousness generally diminished as the night went on, especially after it became clear that the possibility of reversing the decision to fire Land was on the table.
Many questions were asking the trustees why the decision was being put off until April 5, and not dealt with sooner. "The Public Schools Act says that in order to reverse a motion, there has to be written notice given one meeting ahead of time," noted Pellizzaro. "It's not legally in our power to vote on it today." As for holding a special or emergency meeting to deal with the Land issue, Pellizzaro said that the board was under the impression that the use of the word 'meeting' applied specifically and solely to regular meetings, but did agree to requests from the audience to further investigate the feasibility of calling such a meeting, pushing the reversal onto the trustees' plates before April 5.
Another common question related to conflict-of-interest positions, as three trustees - Pellizzaro, Guido Oliveira, and Vince Nowlin - have spouses who work for the school district, in some cases at R.D. Parker. "We know that there were no declarations of conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest in dealing with Mr. Land's situation," said Mason. "As members of the public, we do perceive it as a conflict of interest to sit in judgement on an administrator for whom a spouse works with, and may be consider my spouse's boss. We don't feel it's appropriate."
"The Public Schools Act spells out what is and what is not a conflict of interest," replied Pellizzaro. "That is not a conflict of interest under the Act."
Paul Pritchard later brought up the conflict-of-interest issue again, noting that he had been told by a representative of the Manitoba Association of School Boards that the Public Schools Act primarily addresses pecuniary - i.e. financial - interests and that the group has twice petitioned the province to expand that aspect of the Act. "In response to that, the Manitoba Association of School Boards has asked every school board to develop a policy and implement a comprehensive policy for conflict-of-interest which fills the gap in the Public Schools Act and guides trustees with regard to interpersonal, professional, or non-pecuniary business conflicts," said Pritchard, adding that such a policy would also "help to maintain public perception of a transparent and trustworthy board." Pellizzaro did agree to consult with the Manitoba Association of School Boards to determine whether he, Oliveira, and Nowlin are in conflict on the issue.
Teachers also spoke publicly about the issue for the first time. "Before I begin, I must let you know that I have been informed that I should not talk this evening," said R.D. Parker teacher David Boyce. "However, I'm me."
"We do have a code of conduct which says that there are lines of communication," explained Manitoba Teachers Society officer Bobbi Ethier. "At the same time, our members are employees. They have contracts and they have obligations, as employees, to support their employer. Their employer is not Ryan, the employer is not Bev Hammond, the employer is the board. Whenever a teacher speaks out in a way that could be interpreted as unsupportive of a board or critical of a board, they can be disciplined, and they can be fired. In this instance, the Manitoba Teachers Society, along with the Thompson Teachers Association, believes that the students, the parents, and the community was accurately reflecting the concerns which the teachers had."
"We would prefer that our teachers and our members remains safe, and not be disciplined," she continued. "Somebody asked in jest if the next in camera meeting is to fire somebody else - our members ask those questions. They need to be safe, and that's why. If you are a teacher in a public school, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your employer. It's my understanding that the teacher interventions tonight were allowed by this board, and it would be my expectation that there wouldn't be any consequences for this debate." At least four R.D. Parker teachers spoke during the meeting.
Boyce noted that when Land was at the school, he could see Land and the three vice-principals in Land's office every day before normal working hours, going over what has happened at the school the day before and what will be done that day, allowing them to spend more of the school day interacting with teachers, staff, and students. "The people that I have not seen are the people who evaluate these four men," he added.
"There are people that were voted for up there, that some of us here voted for," said Brian McCusker, another teacher at R.D. Parker. "We've heard that they've made this decision on a body of knowledge and information that you and I don't have. 'Do I like it?' is irrelevant. I hear people coming in here tonight talking with their heart and their head - it's a lynch mob. There is no question you can answer, Rob, that is going to satisfy people. People are being unfair."
"We don't know what that information was, and we don't know if [Hammond] actually made that decision based on all the available information," countered parent Lovro Paulic. "I think based on the outcome of what you've seen over the last two weeks, you haven't made the decision based on all the information. I don't know that, but that's what we perceive, and that's a really important part of how you do your jobs. If it comes to another vote, you might want to consider how you'll be perceived by the people in the community."
Many of the questions asked of the trustees - mostly either outright or subtly asking about the reasons behind Land's departure - were not directly answered, because doing so would have meant breaching the Freedom of Information and Personal Privacy Act, a situation which at least one trustee acknowledged as frustrating. "We can disclose barely anything," said Ashton. "I tried writing to the Citizen, and by the end of speaking with a lawyer, all I could say was 'hello, we're the school board.'"
Ashton did note, however, that "a principal's job entails a lot of things. It entails communication, discipline of students, deals with resources, the land of the school, the coordination of the personnel in the school, and is also the face of the school. This last one is a big part of it - it involves communication to outside agencies. This includes industry, aboriginal self-government groups, government, you name it. Unfortunately, the only one that can become public is how he deals with students. It is a huge role, it's massive, but there are several more dimensions that I cannot say a word about."
Pellizzaro said that the school board considered several other options, one of which was not extending Land's contract but allowing him to remain as principal for the rest of the school year. "Let's turn it around," he suggested at one point. "Let's say you were an employee of the district, and a group of people started picketing and saying that we should fire you. Would you want us to base it solely on what those people say, or would you want us to base it on our internal evaluation of you as an employee? I think a fair process doesn't just base it on public outcry, because you don't have every perspective."
The spectre of drugs and gangs was also raised, with Murphy noting a former school security guard had told him the drugs and gangs situation had improved dramatically since Land's arrival. "Did he not get rid of [the drug dealers]?" asked Sheppard.
"Not to my knowledge, frankly," responded Pellizzaro. "We continue to have problems with gangs, and drugs."
The meeting was not held in the boardroom, as trustee meetings typically are, but rather in a separate room in the school board office which was set up to accommodate roughly 50 people. Even with extra chairs added and every inch of standing room spoken for, the room was filled to overflowing, with an audience of approximately 75 in the room and another 30 in the hallway outside.
Most of those in attendance were R.D. Parker students or parents of R.D. Parker students, but there were also a number of teachers from the school, as well as acting principal Wally Itson and vice-principal Rob Watt, and others with no direct ties to the school.
The trustees made the decision to fire Land, who was in his second year as principal of R.D. Parker but still on a probationary contract, Feb. 22. Voting in favour of Hammond's recommendation to do so were Pellizzaro, Oliveira, Nowlin, Ashton, and Valerie Wilson, while Tucker and Sya Gregovski were opposed.
CORRECTION: An earlier draft of this story stated that Alexander Ashton was the trustee who brought forward the motion to reverse the previous decision. It was not him, but rather trustee Leslie Tucker.
