The District Parent Advisory Council for the Qualicum School District would like to see some policy changes to make schools more inclusive, including flying pride flags at all schools.
The request was brought to the school board attention by Ray Woroniak, DPAC president, during the Jan. 28 meeting.
Woroniak said DPAC recently discussed the issue of school principals facing backlash about whether or not to display pride flags in schools.
"DPAC strongly advocates and will continue to advocate for the adoption of a district-wide plan and policy that incorporates the pride values and visible inclusion of pride flags at all schools," he said. "The symbolic value of pride flags serve as a powerful statement of solidarity and inclusion to our community."
Woroniak added DPAC is also requesting the school district integrate pride into its policies and curriculum, include more professional development for staff to understand and implement pride values more effectively and create more opportunities for discussion and initiatives related to pride values that involve parents, students and community.
In a statement provided the PQB News, Superintendent Peter Jory said the requests were "quite confusing to the board and staff".
He added Director of Instruction Rudy Terpstra would report to DPAC's Wednesday (Feb. 19) meeting on the district's work to support students over the last few years, such as policy, flags, professional development and the B.C. curriculum.
"We believe that education is a fundamental human right, and we will continue to support our marginalized students," Jory added. "At the same time, the system needs to be accessible to all students, including those who may come from households with more conservative views, and we have no interest in our schools being ground zero for this ongoing culture war."
Woroniak said the school district does not have a policy that states an elementary school must put a pride flag out, so the decision is up to the principals.
"If a principal puts a pride flag out, they get backlash and if they don't put one out, they get backlash. I personally thought that was very unfair to principals," he said, during a phone call with the PQB News. "I'm just asking them [the school district] to make a policy so it's not on the principal to make that decision."
The request from DPAC stems from last spring, Woroniak added, and his was a follow-up to that request.
Woroniak was not DPAC president at that time, but was provided the Education Committee of the Whole Report from May 2024, which mentioned the Qualicum School District recently had both Ballenas Secondary School and Kwalikum Secondary School fly both the pride flag and the Canadian flag, on separate poles.
"SD69 does not take minutes or record their COW [Committee of the Whole] meetings, making accessing information very difficult," he added. "They do provide reports, but as you can tell they are extremely vague. We are one of the few school districts that do not record minutes or record COW meetings."
Elementary schools in the Qualicum School District do not have pride flag poles, so parents asked DPAC to request the flag policy cover all schools, and not just the high schools.
DPAC would like to see the recommendations made into policy before Pride Month this June.
During the meeting, school board chair Eve Flynn pointed out some aspects of DPAC's requests are already part of school district policy.
She added the board will look at what further steps can be taken 鈥渁bove and beyond some of the things that we do already, because I think we are very safe and inclusive.鈥�
