The Rural Education Task Force says the Thames Valley District School Board is trying to silence them.
OXFORD COUNTY - The Rural Education Task Force says the Thames Valley District School Board is trying to silence them.
All mentions of the task force, which was created in 2019 to dig into key issues in rural education. Zorra Township Mayor and Vice Chair of the Task Force Marcus Ryan says they have sent a draft report outlining their concerns to area municipalities.
"The School Board set up the rural education to talk to residents in the rural areas of the school board and understand what the unique opportunities and challenges were for schools in those communities and this draft report is the result of the two years of that work of listening to residents, turning them into recommendations for the school board to consider."
Ryan says he has no idea why the School Board has an issue with the draft report being sent to the counties of Oxford, Middlesex and Elgin.
"I honestly don't understand why the school board would not want this report to be made public, which to be clear, trustees have participated in and staff have participated in. I just don't understand."
Deputy Mayor for Thames Centre Kelly Elliott says for some strange reason the school board is upset the draft report was made public.
"They sent letters, the Board Chair, Lori-Ann Pizzalato and Mark Fisher, the Director of Education sent a letter to Middlesex County, Oxford County and Elgin County to our CAO's demanding that letter be removed, they used really serious terminology to try and intimidate staff to remove it, that didn't work, it is still on all of our agendas. As a County we will be discussing it this week. They have removed every indication that the rural education task force existed on their web site, the list of board committees, all of the pages that related to all of the documentation for the task force was removed off the web site over the weekend. Essentially they are doubling down, saying that, this draft report should not be public and they don't want feedback on it. That is essentially what they are saying."
You can read that draft report online here. Another issue is the School Board will vote on trustee allocation at the next meeting. They are proposing removing the second trustee from Middlesex and giving another seat in London.
Superintendent of Student Achievement Paul Sydor explains why they removed the Rural Education Task Force from the TVDSB web site.
"The draft report of the rural education task force has shown up on a number of municipal agendas, so that report is incomplete and lacking some key components within it. We are quite concerned that report was released prematurely out to the public, so whenever we have a breach of that nature, we are going to lockdown our social media and any of our media on that subject. I would anticipate that on review, once we've looked at the web site, the RETF web site would come back up."
Sydor says the school board is not trying to silence the Rural Education Task Force.
"It is our priority as an organization to ensure that students in all of our Thames Valley Schools, whether they are rural, urban, suburban, that they have access to the exact same quality of education, no matter which school they go to. We recognize that there is unique experiences for our rural students and we are going to continue to commit school board resources towards the creation of accessible education opportunities for rural schools and for students everywhere."
Both Ryan and Elliott made their concerns public over the weekend. Ryan started off by sharing the letter the TVDSB sent to Oxford County.
Elliott has also been very vocal on the issue online.
Elliott and Ryan will be hosting a Rural Education Meeting this Thursday March 10th and the Blue Line Room, Flight Exec Centre in Dorchester at 7:00 pm for anyone looking for more information as to what is happening with rural education.
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