Trans Alliance Society chair Morgane Oger will be speaking tonight (April 14) at a Vancouver School Board public input meeting to express concerns about the proposed 2016-17 cuts.

More specifically, Oger will be arguing why the VSB's anti-homophobia mentor position should not be one of the casualties.

The Vancouver Board of Education adopted a sexual orientation and gender identity policy in 2004 and updated the policy in 2014, despite controversy, to include protection for trans students.

Oger points out in a TAS news release that recommendation 21 of the BC Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth final report Child and Youth Mental Health in British Columbia: Concrete Actions for Systemic Change urges the British Columbia legislature to "require school districts to support sexual and gender minority youth in schools through general and targeted programs to address child and youth mental health issues."

However, Oger observes that the proposed cuts will prevent the VSB from achieving the recommendation.

"It is a sad irony that the province is causing the Vancouver School Board to cut the support system for LGBTQ students and staff in its schools, rendering it less effective at supporting the very students that recommendation 21 seeks to help," Oger states.

In addition the elimination of the anti-homophobia mentor, the anti-racism mentor position will also be discontinued, multicultural liaison positions will be reduced, 33 high-school teaching positions will be removed, the elimination of the strings and band program, and all 12 enhanced services literacy teachers will be gone.