Pembina Hills school division Supt. Egbert Stang seems to have missed the point in his assessment of the situation regarding former Supt. Richard Harvey (see his letter on Page 7).
He compares the division’s role as guardians of employees’ information to the role of a doctor’s office in protecting its patients’ medical records.
Mr. Stang is not a medical doctor, and the school division is not a medical clinic. We certainly appreciate the need to respect employees’ privacy and not disclose their personal information, and we certainly don’t need specific details about any employee’s personal life.
When they are acting on behalf of a public body paid for with our tax dollars, however, we’re entitled to some answers. Imagine for a moment that the CAO of a municipality left his or her post within months of scheduled retirement and skipped town, leaving no indication why. Then imagine that the council refused to tell residents what exactly happened.
This isn’t an issue of disclosing somebody’s personal information. We don’t need the official’s life story and the nitty gritty details of why that person left. As the people who pay that person’s salary, however, we should be entitled to some answers — especially when the question is as simple as if that person quit or was fired. It’s not such a different situation to what’s going on at Pembina Hills.
We have made clear to school division officials on several occasions that the question we want answered, quite simply, is whether Richard Harvey quit or he was fired. And if he was fired, why?
The division has obviously not been forthcoming with the answer to that question, which has understandably caused a great deal of concern amongst residents within the jurisdiction and parents whose children attend PHRD schools.
We have requested access to many documents, including correspondence to and from Harvey relating to his departure, in an attempt to come up with the answer to that one, simple question. While it might seem like our request for information goes beyond answering the simple question of whether Harvey quit or he was fired, we feel we have to do whatever it takes to answer peoples’ questions about what elected and appointed officials are doing with our tax dollars.
The public shouldn’t expect anything less from us — or from the school division.
