BC’s Minister of Education, Jennifer Whiteside appointed two special advisors to review the governance practices of SD57’s Board of Education on Friday.
Whiteside has appointed Kory Wilson, Executive Director of Indigenous Initiatives at the BC Insititute of Technology and Catherine McGregor, Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Victoria.
This comes after Mcleod Lake Indian Band Deputy Chief, Jayde Duranleau and Lheidli T’enneh Nation Chief Dayi Clay Pountney received support from SD57 for the appointment of two Indigenous trustees to SD57’s board of education.
“We are hopeful they will be able to identify solutions and present those to the Minister,” said Pountney, “Since an Indigenous Educations Outcomes Team came to Prince George in 2019 to discuss our concerns, we have not seen any substantive changes on SD57’s part.”
Wilson and McGregor will be working with both Nations and SD57 to address the root cause of a number of issues including the low graduation rates among Indigenous students.
“Our Indigenous grad rates are not something to be proud of, ” said SD57 Board Member, and the previous Chair of the Board, Tim Bennett in September of 2020, “they have still not even reached 70%.”
According to Bennett, in a regular SD57 school year with normal enrollment rates, on average nearly 450 students self-identify as Indigenous, which is over 30%.
Duranleau says the appointment of the special advisors means the government is listening to Indigenous voices and concerns surrounding issues within the province’s education system.
Pountney says he is pleased with how quickly Whiteside made the appointment after taking place as BC’s Minister of Education in November.
He added that he hopes the special advisors conduct a forensic audit and makes some changes to the system used in distributing funding throughout SD57.
“The system that we use is actually an older system that a lot of other districts in BC have moved away from,” he noted.
Pountney isn’t sure what type of solutions the advisors are going to find during their time with SD57 but hopes they conduct a forensic audit to determine exactly where funding is going within SD57.
“We have been poking in some areas, we have also called for a forensic audit because we do want to follow the dollars and make sure the supports needed are getting what they’re supposed to get,” he added.
Both Wilson and McGregor have until June 1st, 2021 to complete their review.