Greater Victoria School District trustees reinstated after BC quashes case against them

The Province has officially conceded its case against the fired Greater Victoria School District (SD61) trustees after new text messages between VicPD and the Ministry of Education and Child Care came to light. 

These text messages should have been handed over to the courts and disclosed, but instead were withheld. 

Once the text messages came to light, the Province had no choice but to concede the case and has since reinstated the same trustees they fired in January 2025. 

All of this—the court case, the firing and the withheld text messages—has to do with the decision made by SD61 to remove the School Police Liaison Officer (SPLO) program from schools in 2023. 

What led to this point

SPLOs were removed from schools after years of in-depth review was conducted by the school board. 

The decision was made for many reasons, including that many marginalized students and faculty members felt unsafe with police in schools and because police failed to provide evidence of how the program was beneficial for students. 

Following the program being cut, the Province appointed a special advisor, Kevin Godden, to the district with the goal of guiding them in creating a new Safety Plan. 

In early January 2025, SD61 provided the Ministry of Education and Child care with three drafts of a Safety Plan that demonstrated in detail what the roles of the school board and the police would be, to best protect the children in their care. 

None of SD61’s drafts included an SPLO program, but instead detailed how matters that involve police would be handled. 

Following these drafts being presented to the Province, local police departments in Greater Victoria expressed to the Province that they had lost confidence in the trustees. 

Not long after, the trustees were fired from their positions and a government-appointed, sole trustee, Sherri Bell, was given the task of taking over and coming up with a Safety Plan. 

Bell created a Safety Plan that included an SPLO program and it was approved by the Province. 

The nine fired trustees later filed a court case, arguing their termination was beyond the jurisdiction of BC’s education minister, being that they were elected officials whose term would be up in fall 2026. 

Their case was to be heard beginning on May 25th, but was ultimately quashed when this new information came to light.

The Province conceding

Lisa Beare, Minister of Education and Child Care, released a statement in response to the conceding of the case. 

“After careful consideration of the legal proceedings, the Province is agreeing to quash the three government orders that removed the School District trustees of Greater Victoria,” said Beare.

“The effect of this action would reinstate those trustees to School District No. 61.”

Beare continued that she had recently been advised by her ministry staff that the ministry failed to fully provide all necessary documents, compromising the fair and timely adjudication of this case.

Some of the text messages that resulted in the case being conceded and the trustees being reinstated were between Associate Deputy Education Minister Jennifer McCrea and the independently appointed special advisor to SD61, Kevin Godden. 

According to the trustees’ lawyer Sean Hern, Godden was meant to be an advisor independent of the ministry, but was actively providing updates on the situation throughout as the school board developed their Draft Safety Plans. 

Furthermore, there were text messages that came to light between McCrea and Mike Brown, former deputy chief with VicPD. 

What’s next?

Following their reinstatement, the SD61 school board released a statement regarding why they were fired.

“Today’s result represents complete vindication for the Greater Victoria School Board,” said the trustees once reinstated. “The government never had a lawful basis to fire us.”

“The decision of whether to have a School Police Liaison Program, and if so, what it should look like, was ours to make. It was a decision of local policy that fell within the Board’s jurisdiction.”

They added that from day one, the board was committed to making evidence-based decisions about whether an SPLO program was effective or necessary. 

“We asked repeatedly for that empirical evidence from police and from government, but it was not produced.”

The school board alleged that while the Ministry of Education and Child Care knew it was a school board decision to make, they intervened unlawfully. 

“For reasons that are not yet clear, the Ministry didn’t want to be seen to be ordering us to adopt a Police Liaison Program, and instead the Ministry put us through a convoluted and dishonest process of crafting safety plans with a special advisor’s assistance and forcing us to create a plan of which the police approved,” the statement continued. 

They called the whole process a “set-up,” that was coordinated by senior ministry staff who worked behind the scenes with police and other advocates for an SPLO program to try to force them to do as they wished.

“What was done to us was hurtful, embarrassing, damaging and totally unacceptable,” the statement continued. 

“We are parents and community members. We were elected by our community, worked well together as a Board, and made our decisions in good faith and with what we considered to be the best interests of our learning communities in mind.”

The SD61 school board now demands answers and explanations as to why they were fired. 

A judicial review is ongoing, and the court will decide what happens next in the coming week at the scheduled hearing.

More to come.