NDP Education Critic Rob Fleming chats with Cheryl Smith, wife of Troy Bratton, owner of Troy’s Grill. Scarlett Bratton, not quite 8 months, wants to join in the conversation. Troy’s Grill hosted an informal event Tuesday to discuss the school closure issue. Fleming was in Osoyoos to attend Tuesday night’s public consultation meeting on the closure of Osoyoos schools. Smith hopes Scarlett will be able to go to OSS in the future. (Richard McGuire photo)
MLA Linda Larson is doing “almost nothing” to advocate for Osoyoos and its students in the face of a potential school closure, charges NDP Education Critic Rob Fleming.
Fleming made the statement Thursday in the B.C. Legislature as the two MLAs took aim at each other in a battle of words through news releases and the media.
Fleming criticized Larson’s refusal to attend a public consultation meeting about the school closure Tuesday night at the Sonora Community Centre, saying he would attend.
Larson accused Fleming of playing politics by “government bashing and diverting people away from finding practical solutions.”
She also rejected Fleming’s claim that she is representing Victoria to Osoyoos instead of being the voice for Osoyoos in Victoria.
“He’s incorrect,” she said. “I have been doing what it is my job to do, which is supporting the Town of Osoyoos, the school board and Save Our Schools, in helping them to come to solutions.”
Fleming is currently on a tour of the Okanagan where he is also visiting other communities threatened with school closures including Penticton, Armstrong and Salmon Arm.
Fleming said he would be attending public and private meetings with people seeking solutions to the school closure issue.
“I’m here to meet with people from all walks of life,” he said in an interview last week. “I don’t care what their political affiliations are. I will be meeting with trustees, teachers, parents and community members. I want to speak to them and more importantly listen to them.”
Larson said she wouldn’t attend Tuesday’s meeting even as an observer.
“You certainly do not believe for one minute that I could be in the room and just be an observer,” she said in an interview. “Certainly Mr. Fleming would love it if I was there. Then he could focus his entire speech or whatever he’s going to do on the government and not on the solutions. So I’m not going to go and take away from all the work that has been done by the school board, the town and the group trying to save schools by turning this into a political forum.”
Larson denied a report last week saying she’d said Fleming shouldn’t attend Tuesday’s meeting.
“I did not say that,” she said. “He is certainly welcome to attend anywhere he wants to attend.”
She did, however, say she thinks he’ll only use the meeting to attack her government.
“I honestly don’t know what he’s going to do, but you do not have to be a brain scientist to know that is all he has been doing,” she said. “I’ve yet to see any statement that was different than that, but perhaps he has something different to say.”
When Fleming criticized Larson in the legislature for doing “almost nothing,” Education Minister Mike Bernier stood up for the Boundary-Similkameen MLA.
“(She) has done an absolutely stellar job,” Bernier said. “… She’s doing an excellent job representing the members of her community.”
Bernier added that Larson meets with him “daily” to discuss the school closure issue.
Fleming said both Larson and Bernier should attend the public meetings “so that they can really understand the effects of their failure to properly support our public education system.”
Larson and Bernier maintain the decision to close schools rests entirely with locally elected school trustees and provincial politicians shouldn’t “interfere.”
Fleming argues that the problem is that the provincial government is underfunding public education, forcing school districts to close schools against their will.
He pointed out that the B.C. Liberal government has ordered school districts over the last two years to cut $54 million in administrative spending at a time when such spending in B.C. is lower than in any other school system in North America.
“You can’t find more blood from that stone,” Fleming said, adding that boards are finding these savings by closing schools or reducing teaching and support staff instead.
He pointed out that the bi-partisan finance committee last November recommended that school funding issues be addressed in the February budget, but he said the government ignored the recommendations.
If MLAs like Larson were more vocal, cuts to education might be withdrawn, he said.
He defends his decision to attend Tuesday’s public meeting in Larson’s absence.
“As the New Democrat spokesperson for education, it’s my job to advocate for parents and students when their schools are under threat,” said Fleming. “Especially when their own MLA refuses to do so.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
MLA Linda Larson responded to Fleming with her own statement. She says he’s just “government bashing and diverting people away from finding practical solutions.” (File photo)
