Dissection policy stirs up debate at school board

Burnaby Now
February 27, 2010
Jennifer Moreau

The Burnaby school board has agreed to come up with a policy about student choice on dissection.

In a somewhat rare split, trustees voted 3-2 for the policy committee to put in writing what the district says it's already doing: giving students a choice to opt out of dissection if they ethically oppose.

Trustee Ron Burton put forward the motion at the end of the Feb. 23 school board meeting, after animal rights activist Lesley Fox and the B.C. SPCA made presentations in support of a student choice policy.

Fox, who has been lobbying the district for months on the issue, also runs an anti-dissection website called Frogs Are Cool. She said two Burnaby students and one parent contacted her through the website, all with concerns about dissection.

Currently, the district has no policy on dissection, but the practice has been that students can pull out if they want.

But Fox said some students still don't realize they have a choice. They may skip class when it's dissection time or feel pressured to go along with the practice.

"Many students that contact me through the website don't know what their options are," Fox said in her presentation. "Through my website, I'm telling you, there are students in your district that are uncomfortable with dissection. ... It's simply putting in writing what everyone agrees on."

Trustee Tony Coccia voted against the motion and expressed concerns that a policy would not make students aware that they have a choice to opt out.

"There was only two students that actually had an issue with this and one parent," he said. "I just can't really support this. I don't think there has been an issue with this."

Burton said the move by no means reflects on any of the district's staff.

"We develop policy for all sort of reasons, whether it's internal or external. It's something that's going to reflect our current practice, and perhaps enhance it a little bit, which is not a bad thing. All of us agree that there should be choice," he said.

"I see no downside to developing a policy. I see it as being more supportive of students (and) their choice and moving forward on this issue and putting it behind us."

Board chair Diana Mumford also voted against it and pointed out that a lot of the pro-policy correspondence that the district had received was coming from outside of Burnaby.

"I'm quite disturbed how this whole process (has been) going," she said.

But for Burton, that doesn't matter.

"If it's the right thing to do, then who cares who brings it up," he said in a post-meeting interview with the NOW.

The issue of having a student choice policy already went to the policy committee before, but members decided it wasn't necessary to draft a policy.

Now, the committee has to draft the policy and circulate a notice of motion to all stakeholder groups before it comes back to the board for final approval.

For more on this issue, see Jennifer Moreau's blog, Community Conversations, at www.burnabynow.com.