Moments after Green Party school trustee Janet Fraser cast her deciding tie-breaking vote making the NPA’s Fraser Ballantyne the new chair of the Vancouver School Board, the two of them were in a huddle on the edge of the room where she was being assured she would hold on to her position as the board’s vice-chair: Quid pro quo.
Outgoing chair Christopher Richardson was practically invisible during the 15-minute board meeting to replace him.
If he was thanked for his service, I missed it.
The records of the past chairs of this body over the last century, inscribed in a series of brass plaques bearing their names and tenures on the wall outside the boardroom where this meeting took place, will attest to the fact that Richardson — with just over six months at the helm — served the shortest time in history.
Richardson is considered by most, me included, to be a fine fellow with tons of hours spent serving his community. But while he was allowed to go quietly as the school board chair, ultimately he left under a cloud; at the very least he proved to be well over his head when it came to the job. He has said that his “personal reasons” for pulling the plug had nothing to do with family matters or family health.
But he had reason enough to go. You all may have noted my colleague Mike Howell’s recounting of the drubbing Richardson took at council two weeks ago when he appeared before a public hearing at city council regarding regulations on pot dispensaries.
The main point to come out of it was the fact that while Richardson was professing to represent the school board in the position he as presenting, he admitted to council that the school board as a whole never actually discussed or approved what he had to say.
That was public. What happened that same week at the school board in camera was, of course, not.
While Richardson has refused to confirm or deny what took place there, this is what has seeped out from a couple of sources. It has to do with the external Ernst and Young’s (EY) audit and report commissioned by the provincial minister of education into the state of finances of the Vancouver School Board. As you know by now, the report recommended that the 19 schools could be looked at for closure or sale, among other things, to deal with chronic shortfalls the board faces each year.
Now here’s the point. According to a news release on the Vancouver School Board website dated June 9, 2015, “The Board had asked to receive a full briefing by the EY special adviser. However, only Richardson was verbally briefed by the Minister, senior Ministry staff and EY representatives on the highlights of the report last night. The Board was not given a copy of the report and expects to receive it this morning at the same time as its public release.”
But here is what actually happened. During an in camera meeting of the board a day earlier and after Richardson’s briefing by the minister and the rest, members of the board asked Richardson if he had a copy of the EY report so they could look at the details before it was made public.
As you can imagine, when the government with whom you have a brittle relationship, sets its own audit team on you, the least you can expect is to get a heads up on what is coming out in public the following day.
Nonetheless, Richardson said no, he did not have a copy of the report.
But, in fact, he did.
And the following day, when he was apparently called on this point by a senior manager who knew that Richardson had the document, he went about apologizing to a number of board members whom he had misled. And, just to be clear, Richardson told me repeatedly, he would neither confirm nor deny anything that took place during any in camera meeting.
But you can imagine a number of board members were quite annoyed. It was that incident, they believe, that caused Richardson to finally lose the confidence of the full board and led him to give up the job as board chair six days later.
@allengarr
