Langley, British Columbia is the latest battleground for freedom of speech, but that battle isn't happening inside a courtroom. It's happening in the Langley School Board Office.
Schools are supposed to be the place where we teach our children what it means to be a citizen. It's where we are supposed to teach them what our Rights and Freedoms are. It's where, each November 11th, we are supposed to teach them about the valiant men and women who gave their lives for the very freedoms we take for granted.
In Langley, it's also the place where we teach the parents of our children that they have no right to say anything that might upset the School Board.
At least it was about to be until the Langley School Board backed down from voting on their motion to limit what questions parents could ask, and how often they could ask them.
Is this really the message we want to send to our children? That freedom of expression must fit only between the hours of 3 and 5pm? Or that free speech means you can say what you want, but only once every three months, and on a schedule set by someone else?
The Langley School Board should think long and hard about their motion to stifle the free expression of parents at meetings of their board. It is those parents, after all, that the Board works for, isn't it?
Clearly this school board has forgotten that fundamental fact.
The Board claims to want input from parents, but when they are invited to Parent Advisory meetings, they can't be bothered to show up.
As for their own Board meetings, it would seem that keeping a schedule is far more important than a parent's concern for how the education system is being managed in Langley.
That this board "put off" voting on this motion until September is hardly something to applaud. Rescinding the motion in its entirety would have been the honorable and decent thing to do.
But postponing it?
Are they hoping people will have forgotten their moronic plans after the summer? Really?
"They had some correspondence that they hadn't had time to consider."
So says district communications manager Craig Spence.
Yes, I imagine they did. Probably some very angry correspondence from parents and taxpayers irate at the Board's stupidity.
Parents, indeed every taxpayer in Langley has the right to ask questions of this Scool Board. That the Board thinks taxpayers do not have that right clearly shows they've outgrown their usefulness to the good citizens of Langley, British Columbia.
Regardless of whether the Langley School Board passes this motion whenever they have the balls to bring it to a vote, the citizens of Langley should, at the next civic election, kick these morons out of office and elect citizens that actually comprehend what the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms means.
Clearly the current School Board has never even read that document.
That disgusts me.
