Dear Editor:
I want to correct some misstatements in the June 22 article Parents Grill MLA on Teachers' Strike.
The article quotes Jane Thornthwaite as noting that "the parents, many of them teachers, showed up with Daniel Storms, the North Vancouver Teachers' Association president."
To be clear, parents all over North Vancouver are concerned about the needs of their children and this is why they attended the meeting.
Many parents are also teachers and given the current labour dispute, it is natural they would bring their concerns to their local MLA.
I became aware that several teachers may be attending Ms. Thornthwaite's meeting shortly before the meeting, and I decided to attend the meeting and arrived after the event started.
Therefore, teachers did not show up with me as they were already there and the NVTA did not plan to make Jane Thornthwaite's "Join Jane" meeting into a "political" meeting.
Her comments are ironic given how the B.C. Liberal government has politicized the current negotiations with regular comments from Education Minister Peter Fassbender and Premier Christy Clark.
It is also disappointing that Ms. Thornthwaite chose to characterize teachers' attendance at the meeting as merely a political stunt rather than their sincere attempt to communicate their thoughtful, reasonable, and heartfelt concerns regarding their students.
Had the reporter called me to ask for my views on Jane Thornthwaite's comments, I would have been able to clarify why teachers were at the meeting and why I was there as well.
By not doing so, it created a misleading impression of why teachers were there which obscures the real issue: the lack of funding for schools and students by Ms. Thornthwaite and her B.C. Liberal government.
Daniel Storms
president North Vancouver Teachers' Association
