Earlier this week we wrote about School District 8’s decision to cut all Indigenous Education teacher positions from its elementary and middle schools, replacing them with support workers — a role with no instructional authority and no capacity to lead the cultural programming these teachers built over years.
CBC’s Amber Wang has now published a detailed piece on the story, and it’s worth reading in full.
Petition organiser Skye-Lea Farr, who is Interior Salish from near Lytton and whose daughter has been in the program since kindergarten, told CBC:
“The one major concern is the fact that so much will be lost from the lack of the teachers that are leaving, that respect and trust and community work that has been built up and also that once that’s gone, there’s nothing.”
“Indigenous teachers do marches with the kids, bring whole busloads of kids to powwows, make regalia and teach traditional skills they might not otherwise get to learn.”
The petition has drawn more than 600 signatures. The district says it is “still developing an engagement pathway” — consultation after implementation, which is not consultation at all.
