By VOICE STAFF
In this week’s edition, the Voice reports on a recent decision by the District School Board of Niagara to revise its policies on the renaming of schools. This decision comes in the wake of objections raised by Pelham residents to the renaming last year of Fenwick’s E. W. Farr Public School.
During the public debate over that process in the spring and early summer of 2016, Pelham residents lobbying against the name change requested that Pelham Town Council send a letter objecting to the change to the DSBN.
A source familiar with this approach to Council is quoted as being under the impression that Pelham Mayor David Augustyn in fact supported the name change, and wished not to involve Council in lobbying against it. Ultimately Augustyn failed to dissuade Council and in the end voted with the majority to send a letter to the DSBN. After the Council decision, Augustyn emailed DSBN Trustee Dale Robinson to inform her of the vote, using phrasing that struck some as apologetic. As the result of a Freedom of Information request, the Voice obtained this email along with several other documents that we continue to examine.
Following the release of our story, Mayor Augustyn posted a statement on his Facebook page in which he objected to the source’s characterization that he appeared to sound apologetic to the DSBN for failing to stop the vote.
The Mayor included a link to the entire text of the email. However, by the time the Voice was notified of the Mayor’s statement late today, the link to the document in the Mayor's statement returned a “404 Not Found” error.
We post the entire email here. In our original article, and in this online update, the Voice reaches no conclusion as to the purported impression left by the Mayor’s email, instead leaving this up to readers to determine as they may wish.
