It may be the teacher’s classroom but it’s still the principal’s school – as Sutherland secondary’s former music teacher recently discovered after butting heads with the board of education.
After spending a decade as the face of the North Vancouver school’s music program, teacher Michelle Workman was left “dumbstruck and devastated,” when Sutherland’s principal addressed plummeting enrolment by removing her from the band room and assigning her to teach English classes, according to a ruling written by labour arbitrator James E. Dorsey.
In an attempt to recapture the baton, Workman grieved the transfer to her union but had her complaint dismissed after an arbitrator ruled a teacher had no “proprietary right” to teach a particular course.
Despite Workman’s passion for music, Sutherland was failing to attract international as well as local students to its choirs as well as its jazz and concert bands.
The school went from 161 music students in 2012 to 98 by September 2014. The school’s overall enrolment dropped from 900 students in 2012 to 720 in 2015.
Faced with an unprecedented “bottoming out,” principal Ray Bodnaruk decided a course correction was needed, according to the judgment. The school’s lacklustre enrolment was exacerbated by its close proximity to “music magnet” Argyle secondary, which boasted 14 music classes compared with five at Sutherland.
Transferring an engaged teacher who tutored young musicians and promoted the program online was “unfair, arbitrary and disrespectful,” and tantamount to “public humiliation,” according to the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
Rather than another music teacher, the school needed “a comprehensive plan for addressing enrolment,” according to the union.
Dorsey disagreed, writing: “the program’s past portended the future.”
The arbitrator also credited Bodnaruk for making an objective decision based on “the best interest of the school.”
“Staying the course was not the avenue to rescue and grow a program shrinking from within,” Dorsey wrote. “The legitimate needs of the board prevailed over Ms. Workman’s preference.”
Workman’s aspiration to be a music teacher dated back to her teenage years. As Sutherland’s music teacher she organized field trips as well as exchanges with a school in Japan.
When testifying about the program’s declining enrolment, Workman ruminated, “perhaps the students were not inspired by the teacher.”
The school currently has 122 students taking four music classes – an increase of 24 students over the 2015 school year.
