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Red Deer Public values LGBTQ+ students, staff and families

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The Board of Trustees of Red Deer Public Schools reaffirms its unequivocal support and commitment to LGBTQ+ students, staff and families.

Last month the Board voted against having a Division-wide Pride Week and voted in favour of having a Diversity Week understanding we are “Open to All”, recognizing our Division must be respectful and supportive of each diverse group and individual. The decision arrived at by the Board on Diversity Week is now in the hands of the Superintendent of Schools to move forward on implementation, working closely with our schools and the community to make this valued and meaningful.

Since then, the Board has received and appreciated many and a wide range of comments and opinions on the decisions. The decisions have also been part of discussions at School Council and City Wide School Council meetings.

During the Board’s meeting March 10, Trustees and Senior Administration heard four presentations from individuals requesting to share perspectives. As provided within policy, the Board chose to hear those presentations during its private meeting.

Following those presentations and discussion among Trustees, the Board reaffirmed its commitment to have a Diversity Week. The Board will not reconsider its decision on Pride Week.

Following their deliberations, all Trustees support the following motion to review the Board’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Policy, which has already received strong endorsement from champions of the LGBTQ+ community:

● The Board of Trustees directs the Superintendent of Schools to undertake a review of Board Policy 19 – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and report to the Board.

Throughout all deliberations on these motions, Trustees, both individually and collectively showed genuine care, understanding and full support for LGBTQ+ students, staff and community. The Board of Trustees fully expects that our schools are safe and respected places for all students and staff. We recognize the true challenges faced by the LBGTQ+ community and that Red Deer Public must continue to prioritize this work.

Included within the current SOGI Policy is the provision for schools to have events and activities to support members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community. This already includes the ability for schools to host Pride weeks and events. Some schools, in response to this opportunity, are undertaking plans to do so this year.

The Board’s intention in approving the review of an already strong policy is to ensure the policy is highly responsive to the challenges and opportunities of the LGBTQ+ community within school communities.

Red Deer

Judge upholds sanctions against Red Deer Catholic school trustee who opposed LGBT agenda

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Monique LaGrange was ousted last December from the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools’ board for comparing the LGBT agenda targeting children to brainwashing.

A Canadian judge ruled that a school board was justified to place harsh sanctions on a Catholic school trustee forced out of her position because she opposed extreme gender ideology and refused to undergo LGBT “sensitivity” training.

Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta ruled Thursday that the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) Board’s sanctions placed against former trustee Monique LaGrange will stand.

LaGrange had vowed to fight the school board in court, and it remains to be seen if she can take any further actions after the decision by Judge Arcand-Kootenay.

The judge ruled that the RDCRS’s policies in place for all trustees, which the board contended were breached, were “logical, thorough, and grounded in the facts that were before the Board at the time of their deliberations.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the RDCRS board voted 3-1 last December to disqualify LaGrange after she compared the LGBT agenda targeting kids with that of “brainwashing” Nazi propaganda. As a result of being voted out, LaGrange later resigned from her position.

The former school board trustee initially came under fire in September 2023 when she posted an image showing kids in Nazi Germany waving swastika flags during a parade to social media, with the bottom of the post showing an image of kids waving LGBT “Pride” flags along with the text: “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”

After her post went viral, calls for her to step down grew from leftist Alberta politicians and others. This culminated in her removal as director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA).

In September 2023, the RDCRS passed a motion to mandate that LaGrange undergo “LGBTQ+” and holocaust “sensitivity” training for her social media post.

LaGrange, however, refused to apologize for the meme or undergo “sensitivity” training.

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Education

‘Grade inflation’ gives students false sense of their academic abilities

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From the Fraser Institute

By Michael Zwaagstra

The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Suppose you’re scheduled for major heart surgery. Shortly before your surgery begins, you check into your surgeon’s background and are pleased to discover your surgeon had a 100 per cent average throughout medical school. But then you learn that every student at the same medical school received 100 per cent in their courses, too. Now you probably don’t feel quite as confident in your surgeon.

This is the ugly reality of “grade inflation” where the achievements of everyone, including the most outstanding students, are thrown into question. Fortunately, grade inflation is (currently) rare in medical schools. But in high schools, it’s a growing problem.

In fact, grade inflation is so prevalent in Ontario high schools that the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program uses an adjustment factor when evaluating student applications—for example, Waterloo might consider a 95 per cent average from one school the equivalent of an 85 per cent average from another school.

Grade inflation is a problem in other provinces as well. The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Sadly, grade inflation is so rampant these days that some school administrators don’t even try to hide it. For example, earlier this year all students at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, received perfect marks on their midterm exams in two biology courses and one business course—not because these students had mastered these subjects but because the York Catholic District School Board had been unable to find a permanent teacher at this school.

The fact that a school board would use grade inflation to compensate for inadequate instruction in high school tells us everything we need to know about the abysmal academic standards in many schools across Canada.

And make no mistake, student academic performance is declining. According to results from the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), math scores across Canada declined from 532 points in 2003 to 497 points in 2022 (PISA equates 20 points to one grade level). In other words, Canadian students are nearly two years behind on their math skills then they were 20 years ago. While their high school marks are going up, their actual performance is going down.

And that’s the rub—far from correcting a problem, grade inflation makes the problem much worse. Students with inflated grades get a false sense of their academic abilities—then experience a rude shock when they discover they aren’t prepared for post-secondary education. (According to research by economists Ross Finnie and Felice Martinello, students with the highest high school averages usually experience the largest drop in grades in university). Consequently, many end up dropping out.

Grade inflation even hurts students who go on to be academically successful because they suffer the indignity of having their legitimate achievements thrown into doubt by the inflated grades of other students. If we want marks to have meaning, we must end the practise of grade inflation. We do our students no favours when we give them marks they don’t really deserve.

Just as our confidence in a surgeon would go down if we found out that every student from the same medical school had a 100 per cent average, so we should also question the value of diplomas from high schools where grade inflation is rampant.

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