David Price, Chair - Golden Hills School Division Board
After a contentious week in the legislature, the government has pulled back on its legislation regarding gay-straight alliances in schools.
And while politicians continue to hammer away at policy, most school divisions are focused on making sure all students feel safe in their schools.
The first movement towards legislation began in April of this year when Liberal MLA Kent Hehr introduced a motion urging school boards to develop policy to support students who wished to form such organizations. It was defeated, however, during these sessions, MLA Laurie Blakeman introduced Bill 202, a private Members Bill, on November 20.
A week later Premier Jim Prentice introduced Bill 10, and while there were attempts to amend the legislation, it was panned and by the end of last week the bill was postponed.
Golden Hills School Division Board Chair David Price said the board had some discussion around the time that Ms. Blakeman introduced Bill 202.
“We haven’t had a meeting since Bill 10 came forward, so we haven’t discussed that,” said Price. “From our perspective, we are committed to providing safe and caring schools and it is from that angle we are looking at what is coming forward.”
He does have some concerns over the roles of school divisions when discussing the issue.
“The thing that needs to be kept in mind from a provincial versus local perspective is that each of our schools have a different mixture of students and we need to be able to respond to those students’ needs on that basis,” he said. “The board is a little bit sensitive to legislation that kind of takes away from that opportunity to prioritize based on the local students’ needs.”
He says that in Golden Hills, he sees no reason that a group of students interested could not form such a school club. He is not aware of any gay-straight alliances in Golden Hills at present.
Christ the Redeemer School Division Trustee for Drumheller Mark Chung says the School Division acknowledges it is a controversial topic, and says that Prentice’s move to put the bill on hold was the right move. He feels writing it into the legislation is the wrong way to do it, and sees these groups could be exclusive rather than inclusive.
“A Social Justice group would be more inclusive to any kids who are feeling bullied at school,” said Chung. “There are lots of bullying issues, so why not have a group that deals with everything?”
He says the School Board is in the process of formulating policy on such clubs.
Ed Brinkman, chair of Prairie land Regional School Division, says they have not had any official discussions about the proposed bills, and sees no real concerns.
“We think we can care for the needs of our students,” he said, adding that if a group of students came forward wishing to have a gay-straight alliance, they would be able to do so.
“We hope we could accommodate whatever club the students needed,” he said.
