It was surely a sham (shame) to watch the SD57 board meeting Wednesday to "review the data" of such a biased questionnaire. Facts were reduced and presented, with all the cloudiness due loaded questions. Only one question should have been asked - change the KRSS name or not?
To endure so much fuzzy biased information gives trustees opportunity for more cloudiness."Have you taken time to...?" "Share your connection to...?" "How can the inclusive history...?" "How does the name...?" "Is there a way...?" “Reason for...?” “What connection do you feel...?" "I suggest this name because...?" All fluff.
And to endure and listen to responses to one controlled option (why only Shas Ti as THE one isolated option?) is misleading the witnesses.
Bottom line was 63 per cent emphatically oppose any name change at all. A greater fact - more than 2,050 people didn't request a change to KRSS but took time to speak. I dare to suggest most of the population of P.G. and many other communities can't respectfully understand why any of this happened. They didn't respond at all and some that did indicated they are offended by the actions of the SD57 board of trustees and a committee designated to Indigenous Education Advisory.
I personally see this as an attempt to use an elected office and an assigned advisory position to forward an agenda on the public, with bias toward one segment of society clouded in the smoke of reconciliation amid controlled public engagement.
I am not in agreement with a name change, by addition or alternation of Kelly Road Secondary School, but I did my part to state my truth.
Has the board of trustees stated its truth? This entire fiasco can be laid at the feet of a few individuals, not blamed on circumstances or hidden in reconciliation. This is not reconciliation. It is divisiveness.
Will there be truth and accountability to the families and communities they serve, specifically Kelly Road and the Hart community?
In a true spirit of concern and in pursuit of truth, I desire for wisdom to prevail among all parties concerned, for KRSS to remain, for Shas Ti to be the name of a trail, not a school as the name suggests, for the Indigenous Education Advisory committee to focus upon the task they are assigned as a committee to do, for the board of trustees to return to their duties and protocols, for SD57 to expend energies and resource to ensure the well being and education of all of the youth in Prince George and for the governments of our provinces and Canada to engage in meaningful reconciliation with our First Peoples.
G. B. Keryluik
Prince George
