Minister not apologizing for firing VSB trustees claiming defamation

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The education minister is not apologizing to some of the school trustees who are claiming he defamed them.

“I just received that letter,” says Mike Bernier, of the document sent to him by the four of the Vision Vancouver trustees he fired on October 17th. “It’s being reviewed and I’ll respond in due course appropriately.”

It seems he’s not backing down from his decision to fire them. Given they didn’t balance the budget by a June 30th deadline, Bernier feels it was within his rights to send them packing.

“I stand behind my decision to dismiss the board. They did not follow the School Act. I received a letter yesterday. That letter is being looked at, and, as I said, through lawyers [I’ll] probably [be] responding appropriately.”

This comes one day after the lawyer for Mike Lombardi, Patti Bacchus, Joy Alexander and Allan Wong wrote a letter to him outlining claims of defamation. “The implication that you left with the public at large was that my clients were bullies who intimidated senior management to the extent that six of the senior management staff at the Vancouver School Board found the situation so toxic that they had no alternative but to leave en masse claiming medical leave,” writes their lawyer Brian Baynham.

Ten days ago, Bernier fired all nine trustees on the board, hours before they claim they were set to pass a balanced budget.

A statement from Vision trustees says they’re also seeking an apology and retraction from BC School Superintendents Association President Sherry Elwood, who issued a letter to the minister, alleging bullying and intimidation at the board.

BC trustee fired four years ago has no regrets

Meanwhile, trustees who lost their jobs in the past under the same circumstances continue to stand by the decisions that led to their dismissal.

“In case people don’t realize it, it’s real easy to pass a balanced budget. All you have to do is cut services and close schools,” says Eden Haythornthwaite, who was chairperson of the Cowichan Valley School Board when all of its trustees were let go back in July of 2012 for passing a deficit budget.

To this day she defends that budget, saying it was put together with lots of public consultation and put the students first.

A single appointed trustee replaced them, and he immediately submitted a balanced budget.

“As soon as Mike McKay got in, they closed schools that we kept open after years and years of battling,” she recalls.

“He stole back all the things we knew the kids in Cowichan needed. But he also put back a number of items in the budget that we had removed like legal costs and all the money wasted on baloney arbitrations and other things that were completely unnecessary.”

McKay stayed on the job until the next municipal election.

Haythornthwaite says she didn’t run for school board again, saying there was no point in going through the same exercise.

As for how the current Cowichan trustees are dealing with the same constraints, Haythornthwaite says they have kept their jobs by doing exactly what they’re told by the Ministry of Education.