WSD trustee’s wrist slapped for tweeting about staff salary talks

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This article was published 20/05/2021 (1767 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A trustee in the Winnipeg School Division has been censured for breaching its board’s code of conduct, related to confidential meetings.

In a release Thursday, the province’s largest school board announced its trustees voted to formally condemn Jennifer Chen for “publicly disclosing confidential information.”

Chairwoman Betty Edel told the Free Press the penalty was issued during a meeting held Monday, after Chen made public an agenda item about collective bargaining that was to be discussed during an in-camera meeting.

“A rule was broken, and if we want to be able to have free and open conversations in private, we need to be able to do that,” said Edel, who represents Ward 8 in the school division.

Edel said any discussions about staff salary negotiations, including the very existence of meetings scheduled to discuss bargaining, must be done in private, per the division’s bylaws and provincial legislation. Chen disregarded those rules by tweeting about such information, she added.

Censuring or barring a trustee from a meeting or committee are among the minor penalties school boards can impose when one breaks a rule. Boards also have the authority to take more drastic measures, such as implementing a suspension of trustee duties for up to three months.

When reached via text Thursday, Chen, trustee for Ward 6, said she was not in a position to talk about the censure and simply hopes there will be a “result” for teachers in the division soon.

Late Wednesday, she tweeted she was saddened the board voted to censure her “due to my tweeting about teachers.”

“I am proud of my support for teachers, and as an elected trustee I believe in transparency (and) accountability to our teachers, staff, parents, and school community,” Chen wrote on Twitter.

For weeks, the Winnipeg Teachers’ Association has been calling on the division to come to the table to speed up negotiating a new contract for educators before a new provincewide bargaining process came into force and froze wages at 2018 levels.

Teachers in the division ratified a new contract late Thursday — the same day the Progressive Conservative government voted in favour of Bill 45.

The annual wage increases for teachers are 1.6 per cent, 1.4 per cent, 0.5 per cent, and cost of living adjustment, over the four-year period, between 2018-19 and 2021-22. All public school teachers in the province now have a contract until July 2022; their next contract will be negotiated on a provincial level.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie