Editor:
An open letter to School District No. 46 Board Trustees and Superintendent.
We are in a climate crisis, an emergency that requires leadership like we have rarely seen before. Our students need and expect it – after all, we adults are predominantly responsible for the exponential rise of climate-changing carbon dioxide and methane that have brought us to this most pivotal point in human history. An SOS is being sent out across the Sunshine Coast – Support Our Students – and we all need to heed that call. As an educator and teacher for all of my professional life, I implore the trustees and the chief administrator who reports to them to act in convincing ways that support our students’ urgent need for real, relevant and revolutionary learning around this most significant issue.
Begin by declaring, as other school districts have done, that we are in a climate emergency and must respond accordingly. Every effort should be made to encourage students, teachers, administrators and parents to support initiatives, activities, daily routines and conversations that acknowledge and act on the very real threat climate chaos poses to all of us. This declaration will offer vision, inspiration and resolve to students across the Coast and be a powerful symbol that we are in this together.
Please do not promote the new 2019-23 strategic plan for the Sunshine Coast School District until the wording around climate change is altered to reflect the societal crisis that grips us all. The new strategic plan must articulate an imperative for collective action across all school communities on the Sunshine Coast. We are failing the children and youth of the Sunshine Coast if School District No. 46 does not show bold leadership at this critical moment in time.
Tim Turner, Gibsons
