During a school board meeting on Friday, February 7, 2023, the board had a meeting in regards to Chilliwack School District 33 policies and budget. Heather Maahs introduced a policy to enshrine parental rights in education.
“recognizing that parents are their child’s first educator(s), respecting their parental authority, and recognizing their rights and responsibility to participate in their child’s education.” Maahs statement reads.
In Maahs opinion the a Parent/Guardian Rights Policy should include the following:
• The right to volunteer in their child’s school (in accordance with SD Regulation 902.1)
• The right to access information regarding their child’s activities in school
• The right to view all their child’s files, to challenge any information, and if necessary, use the appeals process (in accordance with Bylaw 4)
• The right to having full access to all resources, curriculum and/or reading material in schools
• The right to determine what subject matter is appropriate for their child
• The right to be consulted when interventions from outside agencies or regular school activities are being considered
• The right to be provided with letter grades and/or the academic status of their child, upon request
• The right to homeschool their child with support of the school district, in accordance with legislated requirements
While Maahs’ motion was supported and second by trustee Richard Procee, he also went on to inquiry about the level of transparency a parent has of what their child is supposed to be learning and what they are actually learning.
“Are you talking about what’s happening in classrooms?” Willow Reichelt asked.
Procee explained parents want to know where they can find a copy of the curriculum and the learning resources that is being given to their children.
The other five Trustees’ voted down the parents rights policy.
Trustee Willow Reichelt suggests some of the points are “very, very troubling,” taking aim at parents rights to access information suggesting the school and teachers should have the rights to keep secrets from parents regarding their child’s activities in school.
“The requirement of schools to report back to parents on some of their students’ activities, there could be a lot of situations where a child is not safe to tell their parents maybe some of the things that are going on at school,” Reichelt said. “Especially a queer kid who is in a family with homophobic parents. They’ve come out at school and they’re living their best life and they don’t want to tell their parents.
“A policy that would enshrine that schools have to disclose would go against that child’s rights, and I would always, always put childrens’ rights ahead of parents’ rights.”
Trustees Teri Westerby and Margaret Reid both agreed has the school district has made it difficult for parents to find what their rights are within the school system by scattering them across other policies. WHile they say craeting a parents’ rights policy would be redundant, Westerby’s said SD33 should create a “parents’ rights access kit” and make it easily available to the public.
“I’ve had several parents come to me asking for guidance on how to process some things that are going on in their schools,” he said. “So I would absolutely love to see more transparency and communication with parents in the district.”