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The @VSB39 LRFP is set to be approved at next Monday's Board meeting and yet I am very skeptical that the trustees will be making an informed decision on this document. Let me go into my concerns and then ask the trustees to address the key ones.
1. The trustees are being asked to write a blank cheque on the Land & Asset Strategy. The Board has not been shown this document yet they are being asked by staff to approve it sight unseen and make it a foundational piece of the LRFP.
2. The LRFP has been framed as a dynamic document, a living document. Some trustees I've talked to have said they are prepared to approve the LRFP even though it does not reflect everything they want because the Board will be able to revisit and improve it over time.
I truly hope that our trustees are not that naïve. The same promise was made in 2016 and was never followed up on. More importantly, the LRFP itself (§1.3.4) states which parts are dynamic: "programming, enrolment, SMP and expansion projects".
Notably absent from that list are the vision and guiding principles, so, if those are important to any trustees, they need to be addressed now because they are not intended to be revisited in the future.
3. Trustees met in November and wrote an educational vision which was intended to underpin the LRFP. This was something that I had advocated for as @VanDPAC Chair and I think the document produced by the trustees represents a good first step in what should be a longer process.
I had conversations with several trustees on the vision, offering both my comments on the document and also my support for an LRFP based on the vision. While the vision might not be perfect, the trustees were taking control of the process by stating their high-level priorities.
And then the draft LRFP was released last Monday and it explicitly says (§1.2.3) that staff have chosen to set the trustees' vision aside for a more prescriptive, data-driven model 
This is the very definition of organizational dysfunction. The Board has the responsibility to set direction for the district. If staff are going to countermand that direction then the Board needs to explicitly address that behaviour and to do so promptly.
I 100% agree with former @VanDPAC executive @parkroyk on this: https://twitter.com/parkroyk/status/1350910725452042240
4. The LRFP is a document that has massive implications for city planning in Vancouver for the next several decades. The trustees need to give it their full attention and have robust conversations on the Board itself, with stakeholders, and with the public.
Moreover, these conversations need to take place in the public eye. Transparency in the decision-making process is key to ensuring that public trust is maintained throughout this process, up to and including the final Board decision.
And yet we are constantly reminded that transparency is not valued at the VSB: Stakeholders are asked to submit questions by email with replies also coming by email. This is not transparency.
And, more importantly, it doesn't matter how many private workshops and discussions trustees have had on the LRFP, if they don't have discussions and debates in public then their decisions will not be trusted and their ability to represent the public trust will be eroded.
So I'll leave this to our trustees and I hope that some of them actually state their positions on any of these issues for the public record:
@CarmenCho17 @estiemgonzalez @fishtron @janetrfraser @OliverHanson @bard1952 @reddyforchange @awong39
@CarmenCho17 @estiemgonzalez @fishtron @janetrfraser @OliverHanson @bard1952 @reddyforchange @awong39
Looks like I was blocked by Fraser Ballantyne. He doesn't have anything of value to add this conversation anyway so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
