THE WATERLOO REGION DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD (WRDSB) - ARE THEY RELEVANT HERE?

My overall answer to the question raised above in the title is no. They (WRDSB) are supposed to be an educational institution, not an institution involved with polluters, Ministry of Environment, Chemtura Canada, contaminated sites in Elmira or elsewhere etc.. This is why here in the Elmira Advocate over the last six years you would have to look long and hard to find any reference to them anywhere. That said our illustrious mayor has on two occasions in the last year actually dragged them and their behaviour into another totally irrelevant issue to the School Board, namely the mayor's election expense scandal. She did it first through her lawyer stupidly sending me threatening e-mails, which I viewed as outright blackmail; attempting to keep me out of the Superior Court hearing into her reinstatement last July. Then she dragged the WRDSB into her speech to MECAC (Municipal Election Compliance Audit Committee) last October in Woolwich Council Chambers disparaging me about a twenty year old battle my wife and I had with the WRDSB.

So what has happened now that I am posting here about the WRDSB? Well haleluah the Waterloo Region Record have aired the Board's dirty linen publicly. Impotent and generally over the decades lapdog trustees are beginning to snap at the corrupt system and procedures inherent with this Board. Last Thursday's K-W Record carried this story titled "It's completely divided, dysfunctional" and then yesterday's Record Editorial was titled "School trustees need a time out". The Record even went so far as to suggest that the Ontario Ministry of Education need to seriously consider stepping in and cleaning house. This School Board's corrupt responses to multiple legitmate parental complaints from multiple schools resulted in my wife and I having to defend a civil suit from a Board employee, aided and abetted by the School Board and the employee's union.

While I thought this sorry case was long dead and buried it turns out that apparently certain individuals wishing to impugn my credibility have been keeping it alive behind the scenes. Interestingly shortly after the court case ended in 1999 we the public were treated to an even more disgusting spectacle regarding the WRDSB. That would be the Ron Archer child abuse scandal and the Board's complicity by doing what they did best at the time which was to hide, bury and enable child molesters in their midst. Let me be clearer. What they did with Ron Archer and other employees was to deny all parents' and childrens' complaints against their employees, no matter whether alleged illegal behaviour or in the case involving my wife and I and many more parents, simply inappropriate, nasty behaviour.

With this background in mind including yet another reference to this twenty year old case used to disparage me again from an unlikely source during the last municipal election campaign (no this time it wasn't Sandy), I decided now was a good time to clarify a few things. I dropped this issue a very long time ago but if certain nasty and ill informed individuals in their own right, wish to resurrect it behind my back or otherwise, than I must respond. That said there is a formal court Settlement negotiated between the parties filed in Superior Court in 2004 that restricts what each party can say about the other. This is fine with me but third parties should not be inaccurately or dishonestly raising this twenty year old case either publicly or privately for the purpose of undermining facts and data which I present on environmental or other public interest issues totally irrelevant to the WRDSB and or education matters.