A Statement from Armstrong Elementary School Parents’ Advisory Council on Recent Concerns Raised with School District 83
How It Started
As many are now aware, the parents and caregivers of Armstrong Elementary School were informed on May 13, 2025, that our current principal, Val Edgell, would be moved from our school to Shuswap Middle School for the coming school year. This transfer was unexpected, and for many unwelcome, as Ms. Edgell was only two years into a typical five-year term.
Though she cannot comment, the move was clearly not her choice – she had expressed an intent to retire from AES in coming years and is in the midst of several long-term projects. She is perceived as doing strong work in creating a vibrant school community and guiding the school through a difficult period, which included the loss of Certified Education Assistant (CEA) staffing and several staff and teachers on leave with significant health issues. As evidenced by the active petition, there is a significant desire in the community for the decision to be revisited and for Ms. Edgell to stay on at AES.
Why Such a Strong Reaction?
The issue with the decision does not just reflect a sadness in losing Ms. Edgell so early. Concerns with the messaging around the decision reflect a larger concern that AES students are not treated as equally important within the school district when decisions are made.
Whether with administration assignments, support staffing, or other issues, Armstrong is seen as systematically short-changed. This issue has brought up several examples of Armstrong receiving unequal status in decision-making within the School District, and this issue has been presented to the SD83 School Board of Education along with the concerns related to the move of our principal.
What is AES PAC Doing?
AES PAC has met with our Board of Education Trustee and provided an open letter to be presented at the recent Board meeting. This letter asked the SD83 Board of Education to provide financial documents and other information that would prove the perception of unequal treatment to be inaccurate. You can read more about the financial and staffing number requests in particular in this post. We are awaiting a response to this request.
Examples of the perceived unfair treatment include:
- In the 2024–2025 school year, the AES PAC were informed that our school would lose 3 CEA positions. We understand a further 2 positions were removed from Len Wood Middle School in Armstrong. We also understand that a total of 10 positions were cut from the 25 schools across this District. This would mean that 30% of the CEA cuts for that school year were made at Armstrong Elementary School – one school with a student population of 235 students. 50% of the cuts would have come from Armstrong schools. We also understand that some positions were later hired back, but do not understand any of those hire-back positions to have been placed at AES;
- For the 2025–2026 school year, we have been advised that our Learning Resource Teachers for the school will be cut from a 1.6 position to 1.4, equating to one teacher spending fewer days each week at the school. In 2021 AES had 1.9 LRTs available to the school – staff advised that this year the LRTs operated with a waitlist, unable to quickly get to all children in need of the resources. We are not aware of other schools in the District seeing LRT cuts;
- Armstrong also lost youth programming that remains active in Salmon Arm over the previous year, including the Bridge program, a Youth and Family Outreach worker, and another youth-focused program at the local schools;
- This ties into a significant history of concern. In 2016, the previous local School Board was fired after attempting to close AES, claiming a lack of funding – examination of their records indicated that they had moved operation funding for the school into funds to build the new – excellently rated – District office;
We have asked the District to review the decision to reassign Ms. Edgell with appropriate consultation and in light of all the information available. The PAC is concerned that the decision to relocate Ms. Edgell is part of a trend which treats Armstrong as a secondary consideration for funding and administrative resources.
This decision was presented to us as required in order to fill the needs at Shuswap Middle School – recognizing that the best decision for our students would not be to move our principal this year. Staff leave issues and other disruptions at AES do not seem to have been known or considered with this decision. Simply put, it seems her talents were required elsewhere, and the needs of our students are not as important as the needs at Shuswap Middle School.
We feel there is a need to stand up for our students, and that they deserve to have their needs considered as equal to other students in the District. We are reaching out to other local schools, as we do not believe this trend is one that solely affects AES.
How It’s Going
Unfortunately, after raising our issues with the SD83 School Board of Education, we have received word that in addition to losing our principal and some LRT funding for next year, the District has decided it would be appropriate to further reduce the CEA resources at AES.
As we understand the most recent decision, it would reduce our CEAs by another full-time position, in addition to the three lost last year. We do not yet know how many other positions will be cut within the district. This would take our CEA resources down from 14 positions in 2023–2024 to 10 in 2025–2026. This is a significant cut of our CEA resources in two years for a small school.
Our school is consistently fully enrolled. The District is projecting a loss of students and funding in the coming years, but there is no indication that that is likely to be the case for AES or other schools in Armstrong. Far from disproving the perceived inequality in decisions affecting Armstrong, the District seems intent on proving us right.
This translates into an issue of equity in Education. All children in the province are equally deserving of educational resources. We plan to continue to escalate this issue through local and provincial government bodies responsible for overseeing equity in education as appropriate.