Hello Friends,
We've been busy behind the scenes the past few months.
Following extensive research and legal analysis, The Friends of Vic High (FOVH) have today sent a letter to Minister of Education, Jennifer Whiteside demanding that she immediately order a suspension of any transfer of interests in land (related to Victoria High School) pending a full investigation of this matter by her office. We further demand she takes appropriate remedial steps to protect Victoria High School lands and ensure that the law is followed by SD61 at all times.
SD61’s attempt to grant the Statutory Right Way (to the City of Victoria) is an attempt to circumvent her authority and SD61’s obligations to the detriment of current and future students of Victoria High School and the surrounding community.
The attached FOVH letter, drafted by our solicitors Mulroney Siver Law, follows years of investigation by the FOVH of SD61s activities related to the leasing away of Vic High educational land - land that was intended to be used to revitalize Memorial Stadium at Vic High based on an original plan devised and partially funded for more than a decade.
For more than fifty years, Memorial Stadium has been allowed to deteriorate becoming a dilapidated facility not safe for student use. Comparatively, schools like Oak Bay High School have seen continual investments of resources over the decades and today enjoy university-like sports facilities and other modern, student-benefiting infrastructure.
In recent months, SD61 has found itself at the centre of controversy revealing a troubling pattern of issues related to systemic inequality, systemic racism, and fiscal mismanagement - issues the FOVH have been working diligently to bring to the attention of the public for years.
Please read the letter (linked below) and share it widely in your network. The fight for the educational equality rights of the current and future students of Vic High continues. Please ask your friends and neighbours to also sign our petition. Every day we are gaining more support from concerned parents, other community groups, and parent action committees across the Greater Victoria region. We welcome all to join us in solidarity.