ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 53 Tisha Boulter, trustee SD64

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Ask Salt Spring Answered's Damian Inwood talks to Trish Boulter, trustee for School District 64 about SOGI, the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity resource, and also about falling school enrolment and the expensive water taxi program.

You're listening to episode 53 of Ask Salt Spring Answered, in which we talk to Tisha Bolter, who is a trustee for School District 64, about a number of issues, the SOGI program, and also school enrollment and water taxis. I'm here with Tisha Bolter, who is a trustee with School District 64. We've just been in Ask Salt Spring. My name is Damian Inwood, and several representatives from the school board were at Ask Salt Spring. Tisha, Jill Jensen, the superintendent, Jesse, the secretary treasurer, and Nancy, who's another trustee. But Tisha's agreed to come in and talk to us today.

So welcome, Tisha. Thank you. And yeah, I think it's fair to say that the first hour of our Salt Spring was probably taken up with the question from one of the people who was representing some parents who were concerned about the SOGI, I guess it's not really a program, but the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. And I think it's fair to say that my feeling about what came out of it was that people don't really understand exactly what that's about and how it's involved in the school system itself. The concern seemed to be the types of books in libraries and they were talking about the danger of indoctrination and it's pretty clear from the comments that came from the school district representatives that

that this isn't exactly what's happening in the schools, right? Can you just talk a little bit about it? Yeah, so what I was understanding from the concern that was brought forward was, A, that they thought that it was a SOGI, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Resource. They thought it was a program that we as a school board had elected to teach. And in that felt that it was inappropriate and that I think the assumption was made that there was some sort of indoctrination going on or that our bias was for. There's just much more involvement that I think was assumed by the participant who asked the question. What we tried to articulate the panel of Jill, myself,

Jesse and Nancy was that, A, SOGI is a resource put together, vetted by the province, the Minister of Education. It's not a program. It is a resource for teachers, but it's also a resource for parents um and it's age appropriate from kindergarten all the way up to grade 12. so um that i think is a misunderstanding i think the the thing around the resort the actual books in the library that you refer to um what i think they were acknowledging the person that had the concern wasn't so much i think

they finally resolved that books that they were um originally thought shouldn't be there they've decided fine they're going to be there but they had recommended a long list of books they said books which which should balance out the bias that they felt we had. So that was an interesting question for me because I believe only one of the recommended resources was a book. The others were YouTube videos and they didn't meet the threshold of appropriate uh minister of education resource for a school and i think that that's um something that that they maybe we could still unpack that and help to explain to people what our role is when it comes to um having families make choices and around their sexual health, gender identity within their own

family and within their doctors has nothing to do with the school. But we want every child and every teacher to feel included and have a safe space in our classrooms. And that does include having resource material that represents them. Like Jill had given the example of, an example of that would be, can we have more books that represent, you know, two moms in a home with a child as opposed to most of our books in the history have always had a mom and a dad. And so we're making changes to have better representation so that kids can feel belonging and safety. Right. And I think, you know, as you said, I think it was either you or Jill said that this whole question about transitioning and so on is not, you know, it's not part of it. That's between a child and their family and their doctor

and the health system and everything else. If they decide to go that route at some point, right, that this is not the school district is encouraging this or, you know. Well, I think one of the participants wanted to hit home that the biggest concern is that we are encouraging somebody to transition from their gender at the school district and that they would like resources put in place that those individuals would know the dangers of doing that. And I think that was the point. Now we're actually not talking about sexual orientation and gender identity as a broad topic. We're actually talking about biology. We're talking about someone's medical choice to make a change within their body.

And yes, of course, like you said, we don't make those recommendations. We don't encourage. We don't brainwash anyone in that department. That is an individual's choice. That is a family's choice. But more importantly, I believe there's some misunderstanding around how easy it is to do that at what age, because there is an understanding that minors are being pushed into some sort of transition that they then later regret so there's some um topic around detransitioning and the dangers of that and um that's a whole there's a whole database around this that i think my concern is that some

of the folks that were there today where are they getting their information because I do a lot of research in this and I I'm really careful what what sources I use for in for real information like public health science based resources science based YouTube videos the things that were being provided weren't based in science. Right. And as you said, you have a responsibility to support every student regardless of what their personal feelings are. Yeah. And I think some of my concern when there's anti-SOGI sentiment, right away I think that it's an anti-trans sentiment.

And I think I was pretty clear, as you would have witnessed in our today's ask, that trans rights are human rights, and that's where it stops. It's not a conversation, it's not a debate. It is really, really clear that these spaces in our classrooms need to be safe and that everyone feels welcome to express themselves and use the pronouns that they prefer and and we will we will make sure that that is that is what we stand for yeah so if somebody decides they want to be known as they or them you support that that's right and how do you react if a student another student doesn't follow those rules, what happens then? You mean like me as a trustee? No, the school itself.

Well, I would say we're on a learning curve of this. So some teachers are more comfortable with this conversation than others. We're all learning this at the same time. I would say the kids themselves are way more advanced on this topic than we are. And they are way more comfortable with this. Predominantly, I mean, my kids are 17 and 24. Pretty much these days, they just refer to anyone as they or them until they know what the person wants to be referred to. It's just become a new culture that you just don't presume until someone tells you.

And that's different from how you and I would have grown up. We would have looked for physical cues and sort of guessed, oh, they're male presenting or female presenting. And we might call them madam or sir without even knowing. Whereas the new generation is much quicker than we are. Of course, if anything is brought forward, we have policy in place that says that we respect and acknowledge that there are different gender pronouns that one is using and that we will make sure

that that is respected. So if an issue comes up, like if another student or a teacher is not using the pronouns of that student, that needs to go to the school level as a concern, like to the principal, and it should get resolved because it's an important piece. Now, as we said, it's a very emotional issue for people. And is there something you think you could do to better kind of explain this to the general public who might have concerns around this issue?

I mean, have you sent stuff home with kids and to the parents and that kind of thing? Just explaining, you know, what you that kind of thing just explaining you know what you said in today's meeting you know well and this topic like any topic that there's a disagreement about i would say a majority of our parents do not have a problem with the fact that we are supporting our 2SLGBTQ plus students what What you're hearing is a very loud minority of parents or community members. And that doesn't mean we don't listen to them. It just means that I don't think it's a majority voice. Those that are in support of us upgrading to gender neutral bathrooms, putting more resources in our classrooms that support uh all gender identities

and sexual orientations are not are not debating this they're happy that we're doing it and so you're not hearing their voice so i don't think it's as large a population that needs that education as one might think um i do wonder if there's the willingness from those who are presenting as anti-SOGI what their willingness is to learn beyond the resources that they've been finding online to educate them. That's a concern for me. But yes, I would say from a trustee perspective, our School Trustees Association has just put out a new resource guide to help trustees with this topic the minister as was indicated in the ask today has given out a mandate letter around soji topic so it's it's um it it's definitely on people's minds uh the government is realizing there needs to be more taking a stand

and putting the information out there. The School Trustees Association realizes this is a pressure that trustees are feeling at board meetings and at PAC meetings. And so maybe more resource material needs to come out. Whether or not, yeah, like how to do that is a good question like does that do we have more flyers do we have um but i think jill's point of when we talk about this as a general issue it's it's too broad and vague if you have a concern with an individual student that is feeling harmed in any way, then we can get to the detail of it. We can actually say, okay, you, your child was X, Y, Z, non-represented, was told to question

their gender identity, any of those things. If those things are happening, literally happening, we need to know about them and we will we will then be able to actually deal with this issue if we're just talking about a philosophical opinion or bias around um the rights of trans and non-binary people i it's it's for me it's not a debate and and i can give out a lot of information but i don't even know if that's at the heart of it. I think if someone truly wanted to learn about this topic, about sexual orientation and gender identity in 2025, they could find a balanced, you know, information out there to help inform them. And like I said in the meeting, one of the most important things to do is not to read a report, is to talk to someone who's trans. Talk to someone who is non-binary.

Their lived experience is what we need to go by. Because if you have cisgender people in a room, cisgender meaning I identify with the body i was born into um making all the decisions we're not have we don't have the lived experience and i think that's the thing that's missing i haven't had any anti-soji person come up to me that is trans or non-binary or or or maybe i think all of them are heter heterosexual. So it's a tricky thing because it's like you need to actually really listen with two ears and actually close your mouth for a moment and really take in the lived experience of someone who this matters to them. Right.

Have you had at board meetings, have you had people come in and discuss this with you in a confrontational way or in any other way? We thankfully have not on this island. I know other school districts have had a major problem with this, particularly Chilliwack, I think Kelowna. There's just there's been a few, maybe even Prince George. There's been some districts who've had to even bring in police to escort staff and trustees out. Thankfully, no, we do not have that occurring in our district. Right. Okay, moving on, we then got into declining school population questions from Gary Holman and we learned that since 2000 the school district student population has dropped from 1800 to 1500. What does that mean in terms of, I mean obviously you've had to close down Sims where where we are today, and the Phoenix School. It affects your revenue, I guess, the amount of money you get from the government to actually operate the school district. Yeah. Is it a crisis yet, or is it getting closer?

No, I wouldn't say it's a crisis. I mean, that is why when I joined the school district six years ago, the board before me made a motion to do a reconfiguration review because they knew that we were going to need to right-size our district for the amount of population that we have. So that's been a huge piece of our work in the last six years. So I'm on my second term of being a trustee it's really been getting to this place where we can right size so that we are living within our means the crisis was eight years ago um and it kind of has always been a bit

of a an alarm for this district like i said in the meeting we've tried different things bringing international programs to increase revenue going to a four-day week to decrease expenses there's been various tactics to balance that budget but they've blip helped for a little bit and then again we're just not having the right for the uniqueness of our, our geographic, we're just not having the right amount of students to, to balance the budget without tweaks here and there constantly. And so the pressures, as we also talked about was transportation in our unique waterways here. And so there's lots for us to look at. I don't feel like we're in a crisis at all i we've just been incredibly um fortunate to have jesse guy our secretary treasurer who's just astutely

helping re-steer this ship into a steady um place into the future all right yeah we spent quite a bit of time talking about the water taxi issue um in that uh it apparently costs 1.1 million per year for the water taxi yeah which is a considerable amount for about 70 kids i think closer to 90 is it 90 okay um and uh at this point the school district isn't thinking about charging parents for transportation. No, I mean, you always have to consider that. Some districts do. They charge for their buses. Every time it's even come up as like a thought, we've said, no, that's just not an option for us. as complicated as unique geographic funding buckets are I think it was

explained that we do get some extra money from students that reside on Saturna, Pender, Galliano and Saturna because of their new unique geographics which then does help fund the water taxi it's not an all-in all-out we definitely make our operating budget does support our transportation and that's a choice we choose to have transportation because some districts like we've said in urban areas you're not required to transport your kids of course they have public transit so it makes it way easier um but each district has to make that decision for themselves but in an urban area the parents would

pay for a bus pass or something probably for their kids right yeah and they probably have reduced rates for student passes and all of that and it was an interesting topic to our gary holman bringing up like what are the what are the possibilities with transit um translink and the school district i mean right now it just there isn't an easy malamalgamation because the bus routes do not match TransLink routes at all like it's maybe at some point if TransLink becomes goes farther down side roads and stuff we could look at that. Yeah okay, something that you were very excited about was having student voices coming to the school trustee meetings, I guess. Yeah.

And tell me a bit about that, how that's going to work. Yeah, well, it looks, I know we're going to have a little bit of a change in terms of inviting them to our school board table and I'm guessing allowing them to have a voice so to speak because typically in the past it's not like we haven't tried this we have had student reps come to our board meetings they've had to get you know get permission out of a class and come down but really they're just listening in the gallery and and to me that's not representation that's that's just a, they're just listening in the gallery. And to me, that's not representation. That's just a student there hearing what we get up to. And it's a bit boring. We started to make some changes last year where our superintendent was attending

student council meetings and was bringing that board voice to the table and and what they did start to come as a student council to present a delegation to the board which is great because then you physically get them in there telling us what they're up to and what their opinions are about things and we'll continue to do that so so that's a good change that we now have them coming for delegations and that Jill is regularly going to their student council meetings to hear what's up, what the temperature, like, you know, what's what's going on. student coming to your board table and representing a voice that's missing at the table because that's our whole job is for student success and balancing the budget in order for them to do that and we're all adults and and some of us have kids that age so we're a little bit more in tune but we definitely need to

continue to build systems in that maintain that student voice and I'm hoping that this is what's gonna be the, they won't be able to be voters, the students, they wouldn't be able to have a vote on a motion, for example, but it will be up to the trustees, I'm understanding from Jill, to make a decision on how we represent them in our board meetings and how we allow them to speak.

And obviously there's going to be a limit. We can't have them vote. That would go against our bylaw and constitution and all that. So, yeah, but I'm always open for more ways to really hear from our students because I think the wisdom lies there. So the democracy is moving down into the school itself really well i think it should yeah yeah absolutely right yeah yeah okay

great well thanks very much tisha for coming in um you're listening to ask salt spring answered with me damian inward on chir fm we are the sound of the gulf islands