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6- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday February 21, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com OPINION & LETTERS The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS A DIVISION OF Media Group Ltd. NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director TERI CASAS Business Manager MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Not a uniform approach Like it or not, parents of students who attend two Halton Catholic elementary schools -- St. Gabriel School in Burlington and Guardian Angels in Milton -- will soon have to purchase school uniforms for their children or face the prospect of having them sent home. We suspect many parents impacted by this board decision will not be amused. In an uncharacteristically erratic move, the Halton Catholic District School Board recently voted to push ahead with a mandatory school uniform pilot project that, according to its own veteran chair, contradicts board policy. At a recent meeting, Burlington trustee Bob Van de Vrande engaged in a verbal joust with board chair Al Bailey over whether establishing the pilot project was a fundamental change of the board's fiveyear-old dress code policy and therefore required 75 per cent trustee support. Roughly a month after being selected to lead the Catholic board's trustees for the seventh consecutive year, Bailey found himself at odds with the school uniform committee assigned the task of developing the pilot project. While he insisted the test program represented a change in board policy and required 75 per cent approval from trustees, others around the board table disagreed. Van de Vrande challenged Bailey's authority on the issue and won out by a slim 5-4 vote -- essentially paving the way for the two-year pilot project to be sent steamrolling along. It wasn't one of the board's more unifying moments. Bailey and Van de Vrande's board table dispute aside, this pilot project to test out a mandatory dress code appeared to be a fait accompli long ago. In March 2006, the board issued a board-wide survey of schools that sought a minimum 75 per cent parental approval for mandatory uniforms. Of 11 elementary schools that returned the survey, none attained the 75 per cent approval rating. At St. Gabriel 92 per cent of parents responded to the survey, with only 60 per cent in favour of a mandatory compliance uniform policy. When asked why a proposed pilot program for elementary school uniforms was continuing when no schools met the minimum 75 per cent parental approval rating, the chair of the pilot project committee responded: "The trustees asked us to create a pilot program." While it's not certain what overall impact the pilot program will have on Halton families, what is clear is that a very vocal minority group has managed to get the ear of enough school trustees to keep the issue alive despite less-than-favourable results from a parent survey and the board chair's opposition to the process. The Oakville Beaver welcomes letters from its readers. Letters will be edited for clarity, length, legal considerations and grammar. In order to be published all letters must contain the name, address and phone number of the author. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Oakville Beaver, 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, ON, L6K 3S4, or via e-mail to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. The Beaver reserves the right to refuse to publish a letter. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn is quoted in Angela Blackburn's article on the just-released OMB decision to allow the moving of Gendella house as part of the proposed Bronte Quadrangle development calling the OMB decision "instructive and alarming". It would appear Mr. Flynn seeks to blame the previous government as well as town and regional staff and politicians (many his former colleagues on BVRA takes issue with Flynn's comments on the quadrangle Town and Regional council) for the OMB decision. What is really "instructive and alarming" is the lack of appropriate action on OMB reform by not only Mr. Flynn's government but by Mr. Flynn personally. It is fair to say the old OMB system under the previous Tory government was not working and urgently required significant reform. The Liberals, however, took over two So please, Mr. Flynn, do not blame the previous government for this problem -- you need only look in the mirror to see another broken promise by your government. As to Mr. Flynn's contention, that the failings of town and regional staff and, by implication, the politicians who directed them, have resulted in incomplete BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com official plans, again he need only look in the mirror. Accordingly, it is instructive to look at another OMB decision the town lost -- the Shell House decision. Mr. Flynn, personally, helped to create the mess in the first place by signing off on the 300 unit dedication on the Shell House property with virtually no public input years to pass the current reforms and even then did not go far enough in protecting local communities from rampant redevelopment. Would the new rules have made a difference in this instance? We will never know. We might have known though had the government exercised the discretion it appears to have in the new legislation that permits it to apply the new rules vs. the old rules in appropriate circumstances. when he was the Ward 1 local and regional councilor. Laurie McGinn (BVRA past president) and I met personally with Mr. Flynn during the appeal process to ask him to explore any avenues his government might have that could help Oakville preserve the last significant lakefront woodlot in the GTA. We didn't hear anything back. Considering Mr. Flynn lives in the heart of Bronte it is sad indeed his only action on these two disastrous OMB decisions is an attempt to score cheap political points at the expense of the previous government and his former town and regional colleagues. BRIAN MILLER BRONTE VILLAGE RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION, PRESIDENT Pud The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone 416-340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline.