Lloyd Edwards Interview: Teacher, Union Leader, & Advocate for Equality

Interview: Lloyd Edwards (LE)

Interviewer: Ken Novakowski (KN)

Date: Aug 23, 2017

Location: Burnaby, BC

Transcription: Joey Hartman

 

KN [00:00:05] Ken Novakowski and Bailey Garden are here today to interview Lloyd Edwards who was the president of the Surrey Teachers Association in 1973 – 1974. Welcome Lloyd. And we have some questions for you that we’d like to ask and feel free to embellish them in any way you feel like you want to. First of all let’s start with where and when were you born, can you tell us that?

 

LE [00:00:39] I was born in Tobago which is part of Trinidad and Tobago – one country – in 1932. And I went to school in Tobago until I was 11. I moved to Trinidad after that.

 

KN [00:00:55] OK so you were raised in Tobago and then Trinidad. OK. What can you tell us about your family. Was it a union or a politically progressive family.

 

LE [00:01:04] My father was a teacher. He started teaching 19. As a matter of fact he was the youngest principal I think ever in Trinidad. He was 21 when he got his first school. But he was trying to get a union formed and he worked for the School Board and they didn’t like the idea of unions so they transferred him to Tobago. He was born in Trinidad. They transferred him to Tobago in a little tiny village there, they kind of isolated him. And he started organizing people up there. And his school started to win scholarships. And they were kind of amazed that they gave him a big school in Scarborough, the capital. And of course they had more opportunity to form a union. So you organize the workers, they’re not necessarily teachers. Many coconut growers and stuff like that. People with very low income and stuff, and they develop it from a cooperative.

 

LE [00:02:12] Pretty well managed their own affairs rather than be…to work for the very low wages.

 

KN [00:02:20] OK. And so so obviously a bit of this might have rubbed off on you…

 

LE [00:02:25] I used to go around with him. I was only about nine and so then talk to the workers and stuff. It was exciting.

 

KN [00:02:35] Right. Can you tell us a bit about what you might remember about your school experience?

 

LE [00:02:39] I went to Queen’s Royal College it’s called, which at that time was maybe the best school in the West Indies… I’m not saying that because I went there, but in that school we had … it was quite a liberal school, you know, if you had an opinion you wrote it. I used to write in the paper for the school and we had challenged the system and so on.

 

LE [00:03:05] Even the education system. And some teachers didn’t like it, and some did. But you weren’t penalized for it. That’s one good thing. So I grew up expressing what I believed without too much penalty against it. So I graduated from school at 18 with a high school certificate, which is like second year here. And then I worked at the customs for

three years, but that wasn’t my style of working. My Dad, was the principal of a school, he said “You’ve got to do something better than working the civil service”.

 

KN [00:03:46] So what did you do?

 

LE [00:03:47] So I said, okay, I’ll go to Canada.

 

KN [00:03:48] Tell us about that.

 

LE [00:03:52] Well, my mother was suffering from a heart ailment. Her doctor was Canadian from North Vancouver. So I went to talk to him about going to Canada because I was admitted at Toronto, Winnipeg by the way, and Vancouver. He said don’t go to Winnipeg – it’s too cold. I remember him saying that. And then Toronto I knew a lot of people in Toronto, and I figured I want to go somewhere different. So he said “go to Vancouver.” He said it’s the best climate in Canada and all that stuff. But I was a cricket player you see, and I said well “but there’s no cricket in Vancouver.” And he said “yes, there’s a lot of cricket in Vancouver.” So that was it… So I went to UBC.

 

KN [00:04:45] And what was your experience going to UBC. This will have been what, in the 50s?

 

LE [00:04:50] I went to UBC in 1953. September ’53.

 

KN [00:04:57] And did you immediately set out to become a teacher when you went to university?

 

LE [00:05:00] No I wasn’t sure. My dad discouraged us from becoming a teacher. He used to say that there are no financial advantages of being a teacher. Everybody wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or something with that where there’s money involved.

 

LE [00:05:19] I had no desire to be. I did pre-med by the way. I did biology, chemistry, physics and so on, but I didn’t … my heart wasn’t in that. I know though he said don’t be a teacher, but that’s what I wanted to do. So in 1957 I took a job on Texada Island. That’s my first job and it was great. I had a wonderful time there. Texada was like a republic.

That’s the way I saw it. There were no police on the island but there was no crime on the island of any kind. And I never locked my house and so on. And if I left some papers at home I’d tell the kids “on your way back from lunch, just open my door and pick up these papers”. I loved the place.

 

LE [00:06:14] So then I worked there for a year and then I went to Princeton. I spent a year in Princeton, I didn’t like Princeton very much. More or less the authoritarian attitude of the principal there.

 

LE [00:06:35] Actually, may I give a story? The first meeting we had, in the first week, and the Friday we had a staff meeting. And the principal … I didn’t know that’s how he ran stuff, because in Texada, everybody took part in it. It was a very nice place to be. But in this one, he made out the agenda, passed it out, and that’s what we talked about – what’s on his agenda. So anyhow, he got to one point about kids running around in the corridors and he said “I noticed that there are students in the corridors during class time.” And he said “It’s your responsibility to have the kids in the classroom blah, blah blah” he went on. So

after he was finished I put my hand up because nobody ever questioned that guy. So I put my hand up and I said “well I can understand the problem. If there are students outside,

maybe two or three of my students, and there were 28 students inside, am I to leave these kids and go look for the ones who are outside?” So the whole staff now, they kind of….

First of all they were shocked that somebody would question this guy. And he said it’s your responsibility. I said “I really think it’s your responsibility as principal to go through the corridors and make sure that the kids get in their classroom”. And that was the start of something, something big there. At the end of the meeting the woodwork teacher came to me and he said “Lloyd, you’re not planning to stay here long are you?” And I said no. So I spent one year there and guess where I went to – Boston Bar. I taught for a year in Boston Bar, and that was okay too. But it was difficult because it was a small high school offering all the subjects. I had three different subjects in one classroom.

 

LE [00:08:38] Triple – you are teaching three subjects at the same time. It was pretty difficult to do that. So after that I went to Dawson Creek, up in the north, and I spent two years there. I got married that year I went to Dawson Creek.

 

KN [00:09:03] You got married in Boston Bar?

 

LE [00:09:05] No, just before I went to Dawson.

 

LE [00:09:12] Now Dawson Creek was really a nice place for men, but my wife didn’t like it. It was a men’s all the activities were for men. So I spent two years there and I was on

the grievance committee at that time. I figured I had to be involved. So actually in Dawson Creek – on the news on the TV they said…

 

LE [00:09:38] They called us communists. They said oh the Communist-inspired teachers blah blah blah. Because we told them we not gonna accept anything — they were offering like 2% and I think we wanted like 5%, and they said Communist Kaiser influence blah blah blah. So anyhow, the BCTF at that time I thought let us down, because the BCTF announced that teachers should not demand too much because, you know, the economic situation. But we were in a good position to get a good raise. When they heard that, they just froze there. Anyhow I spent two years there and then I moved to Surrey, and I stayed in Surrey until I retired.

 

Bailey Garden [00:10:25] What subject did you teach in school?

 

LE [00:10:28] I taught math and chemistry, physics, biology — depending on — math and sciences.

 

KN [00:10:38] So can you tell us a bit about some of the things you really enjoyed about teaching, why you were a teacher?

 

LE [00:10:45] Well, I just like to see some kid who has trouble eventually get the point and get it right. And I have a few letters from parents who said that I inspired their kids to do that …. and blah blah blah Because that was what my dad did. My dad hung out after

school classes for free. He didn’t charge anybody money. And we had people living our house who couldn’t afford to board and lodge in the city. So they lived in our house. So I was used to that kind of thing.

 

KN [00:11:28] So what did you find as the big challenges as a teacher at that time?

 

LE [00:11:33] Well I think that the idea of getting your ideas, getting the principal, vice- principal to understand your ideas. They pretty well told you their ideas, and teachers just

went along with it without challenging anything. And so I decided we should have a staff committee. That was the beginning of the staff committee. Remember Hardy who published that BCTF magazine? – John Hardy. He came out to see what the staff committee was about, no kidding. And he was amazed because…

 

KN [00:12:15] So you got one of the first staff committees in B.C.

 

LE [00:12:19] The first!

 

KN [00:12:19] Oh, the first, so that’s very interesting.

 

LE [00:12:21] But the thing about our staff committee – because I’m biased really – It was a decision-making committee. The principal was merely the chairperson of the meeting. He couldn’t overrule the decision that we made. When we voted – that’s final. And we had a constitution by the way. We wrote a constitution.

 

KN [00:12:43] Where was this? In what district?

 

LE [00:12:48] Surrey. Prince Margaret HIgh School. As a matter of fact, a lot of teachers — I should say administrators — they were worried about Princess Margaret and one person even named it Ho Chi Minh High School. He referred to our school as Ho Chi Minh. He said it, again anytime you question authority they call you a communist. So that was it. We didn’t care, and we had a very good principal when we started our committee and he saw the benefits of it.

 

LE [00:13:25] Because I explained to him that it’s better to have teachers agree with what you want to do rather than tell them they have to do it without any input. And we did a lot of good stuff like we started a committee against racism because there was was racism in the school pretty badly. At that time we had about 10 percent East Indian kids in that school and they would be treated by bullies and so on. So I formed a committee against racism in our school and we had students part of the committee too. And we decided that any sign of racism must be addressed. You don’t just say “well you shouldn’t say that.” That’s not good enough. You must take it up as a real problem, and that’s how we handled it. For example, I could remember one time, one student in my class told one of the East Indian kids in my class … called him Curry Head, you know, because of curry in their food. So I stoppedt, I was teaching math at the time, I said, “let’s put our books down. put your

books down – let’s talk about that.” And, we talked about it and you know what? The students in the class made him apologize. I didn’t say “you must apologize,” the kids said that, after they realized the pain this guy was going through. And so they said “you got to apologize” and he did, and I feel great that it works and I feel this is the way to go. Instead of throwing the kid out suspending — that does not help. That makes it worse really.

 

Bailey Garden [00:15:19] So would that have been in the early 70s when you set up that anti-racism?

 

LE [00:15:22] Yes yes, and then I was getting my house built in White Rock and I hiredd a guy from Uganda, Idi Amin’s country, an East Indian fellow too. He had been chased out of Uganda and all his money frozen by Idi Amin. And he was in Surrey. And he was building a house for his own family, and he had the whole front in glass, you know, big huge glass thing. And some students came….some kids came one night and threw rocks and

smashed up all his windows, and so he called the police and the police said “Well, they

couldn’t identify and blah, blah, blah.” And that is when I decided we’re got to do something not just from my school but the whole district, but the province.

 

LE [00:16:21] So when I came down to the BCTF meeting, that’s when I made that motion that we wanted to form a committee against racism and deal with it.

 

LE [00:16:31] Because you know before that, you just say suspend the kid, and that doesn’t stop anything. Some kids like to be suspended. Let’s face it, you know that. The kind of kid who will be a bully in school — he’s the kind of kid doesn’t want to go to school anyway. So when you suspend him for a week or two weeks, he’s glad. And then he comes back, and guess what, the teachers know of extra work they’re trying to get that guy back where he should have been. So I just forget suspension – it’s not an answer at all.

And so we started from there.

 

KN [00:17:07] And when and how did you sort of get active in the Surrey Teachers’ Association?

 

LE [00:17:14] I did that the first day I was teaching. The first year I was teaching they wanted a delegate on Texada Island. They wanted two delegates to go, you know the usual meeting, and I volunteered to go. I really was glad to go. So I went and I met a whole bunch of people that uh, one or two I knew. By the way, I met Jim MacFarlan at UBC before that.

 

KN [00:17:42] Oh really?

 

LE [00:17:43] Yeah I knew, Jim at UBC. He was on the, what do you call that, the LPP.

 

KN [00:17:51] Labour Progressive Party.

 

LE [00:17:52] That’s right. And they were quite left at the time. I think Jim became more towards the centre, but at that time he was very left. I was an associate of those guys.

 

KN [00:18:15] Lloyd you became the president of the Surrey Teachers’ Association in 1973-74, and you had a very interesting event occur while you were president, a major teacher protest in Victoria. Would you like to just talk about that for a few minutes and tell us what happened and why it happened?

 

LE [00:18:37] Well, you know, at that time Doris Hahn was the person dealing with learning and working conditions for teachers. And we had meetings with the school board and everyone Everything went well. Of course the NDP government had got elected.

And I know there was a lot of, you know, not resentment but disappointment by members of the board although there were one or two NDP members on that board. Anyhow, we had made pretty good progress in our meetings, and then – I think it was Eileen Dailly said

– I think she sent back all the budgets and said “have a second look”. Now they used that – those who would – I know it was political. Some people say it’s not. But the report by Peter Thomson doesn’t say that, but I knew it was political.

 

[00:19:52] And they said that Eileen Dailly said to cut stuff from the budget. She never said that. And they wanted, not a ‘needs’ budget. They wanted a budget to satisfy the political budget. So I realized that it’s simply anti-NDP relly. That was the thing. So why we called, they kind of reversed themselves on so many things we’d already agreed upon. And we said that’s not acceptable, that’s not acceptable. And we had a big argument about it, so

we decided what we were gonna do, is that asked to go into a room in our conference and maybe try to figure out how are you gonna answer this thing. We have no political power really as teachers, and we got to the end of the line and we gotta do something more drastic. So I proposed that we withdraw services. And of course we had people there saying ‘you can’t do that’, and ‘it’s against the law’ and stuff like that. Particularly Doris, but I know don’t call names but two or three people said “No, no, no.”

 

LE [00:21:06] We argued back and forth until finally I said “Well what else can you do… Nothing? You’re just going to accept that?” and finally they said “OK, we’ll take it to the membership”. So we came back and told the school board we decided that we’re going to go to Victoria and they started “hah, hah, hah”. They laughed at us.

 

LE [00:21:24] And what’s the name again, she was an NDP.

 

KN [00:21:27] Betty McLurg.

 

LE [00:21:27] Betty McLurg was there, and Betty and I were good friends you see, and she came over and said “Lloyd, that’s a bad idea. It’s not gonna work. The teachers are gonna refuse to go and you’re going to be very embarrassed.”

 

LE [00:21:42] And I said “Why should I be embarrased?”. I said the worst that can happen is that I quit. You get worried, just resign, there’s nothing wrong with that. But we are going to present it to the membership. So we went back and started preparing. We said OK, if the teachers vote yes that we’re going to go, we got our, we got to have really serious plans.

 

LE [00:22:07] So we put Joe Ruddell, I don’t think you know Joe, the PE teacher, an organizer you know. And we said Joe, what we want to do is to have everything ready. If the teachers say yes, everything was prepared. If they say no, we could get out of it without any expense. So Joe phoned up a bus companies and had a whole bunch of buses ready. So the following day, which was the Thursday, we had a general meeting at Queen Elizabeth School and all the teachers were there. Eleven. twelve hundred

teachers, and I figured — I was kind of nervous myself — I phoned Jim MacFarlan and I said “look, we put in a motion to withdraw services on Friday”. And he said “it’s not going to work like this, it’s not going to work.” And he said “I want to come out” and I said “yeah, but you’re going to have no voice before they vote” ’cause I think he would dissuade them from going you see. I said “Oh, you could come out Jim, but you’re not going to talk on the motion.” And he said “Sure” so he came out. Anyhow it was a special meeting and just for that one topic. So we gave the background of why we were going to give this. And I made the motion that we withdraw services on Friday and consider any other time after that, but Friday for sure because of this, and we would have done it. And I expected it may be close, you know. Well I’m sitting there, and Powlik who was a V.P. — because at that time there’s the teachers and administrators were not — especially in Surrey — they had a constant fight with each other you see. So I was wondering if they would support us but when Powlik seconded the motion, I figured “that’s it”. I said “all in favour?” and I looked around, and I’ll tell you, I really just could barely stand it the response.

 

LE [00:24:19] There were only about five people out of that 1200 that voted against. So that was a big flurry of things someboyd started running out and getting ready. So the motion carried and that’s it. The next day, well there were so many people. First of all, a lot of people wanted to take a class with them. And the ferry couldn’t take everybody. So they had to have another ferry to take the rest of the crowd. And we got down to the parliament

buildings and we started as they say “walking on the lilies”, that’s what they would say. And Jim, at that time Jim spoke with the Minister Eileen Dailly and then arrange something with the Premier Dave Barrett. And Jim he convinced us that things would be OK, he had made a deal and stuff. But at the meantime, I don’t know if you know that building outside, we had a meeting out there and Ernie Hall who was the Provincial Secretary at the time, he came out and he was telling us, “you know, well cool it people, don’t get too excited”.

Blah, blah, blah. And Wes Janzen who was an old-time left-winger you know, member of the CCF was, he got up, and he was shaking.

 

LE [00:25:57] I was sitting next to Wes right? And he got up to talk, and he was just shaking and angry. And Ernie Hall said “Cool it Wes!”, gee whiz that made him even more angry. He said “Don’t tell me to cool it” and he took out his membership – his NDP membership – and he said you say that I’ll tear it up. That’s how much emotion was at that time.

 

LE [00:26:23] Anyhow I think we went back to Vancouver and we had a meeting the following day, Saturday, to decide what next. And then we heard that everything had been settled and stuff like that. But the school board let us down because, since they were blaming the government you figured they would come with us – all of us – they didn’t come.

 

LE [00:26:47] Gary Watkins came. Gary of course was an NDP member too, and he was on the school board he was the only school board member that came. But things went well and we succeeded in what we wanted to do.

 

Bailey Garden [00:27:04] How did that translate into your teaching and in your school? Did you notice a difference?

 

LE [00:27:11] Yes. When pushed to when I was encouraging teachers you know instead of sitting down and waiting to see everybody should participate and come in and support it and see what you want to say and stuff like that because I believe that you can’t leave everything to a handful of people you want everybody to kick butt.

 

LE [00:27:29] And that brings me to Margie in this situation. Margie was she got a job at our school. At that time she was not involved at all in politics. And I was trying to get Peter Ellis was in my school and I told Peter — Peter was an accountant, you see. I said “Peter, you should come on and become involved.” You know, then Peter came on, and he became the treasurer, and then he ran for Vice-president, and then President. And I think Peter maybe, was the longest service president. I think it was five years he was President.

 

KN [00:28:10] On two different occassions.

 

LE [00:28:11] Yeah, yeah. So Margie too, I told Margie, she got herself involved. We got about four or five people in our staff (unclear). Well Kerry was involved before that, but he came to our school. We had a very political school.

 

KN [00:28:26] And that was Princess Margaret?

 

LE [00:28:28] Yeah, that school was really very motivated for politics.

 

KN [00:28:35] So you obviously had a lot of activity in the Surrey Local as well as in the BCTF and the anti-racism program, and I’m wondering if you have recollections of 1983

and the Solidarity movement that rose up against the Premier Bill Bennet’s legislative package. Do you you remember Solidarity?

 

LE [00:29:00] Yeah, I remember it but I can’t recall the details of the…

 

KN [00:29:08] Do you have any particular memory that sticks out in your mind about ….

 

LE [00:29:12] Only the fact that we went out, I think we went out first or something. Remember? We had an order to go out.

 

KN [00:29:17] Teachers were out on November the 8th. Right after the government employees were striking. And then we were next.

 

LE [00:29:27] Right. And then it was supposed to be Munro’s group, right?

 

KN [00:29:31] No. Ferry workers and then Crown corporations and so forth.

 

LE [00:29:36] But after we went out and so on, he made a deal and sunk us right there. Sorry I look at Munro I call it treachery. Maybe it’s too cruel a word but it might be tough. But he got out — he became a representative of the right after that, and I didn’t appreciate that at all.

 

Bailey Garden [00:30:02] Did you attend any of the rallies that summer? There was a big one to Empire Stadium. Were you there?

 

LE [00:30:07] Yeah. I was there.

 

KN [00:30:11] Is there anything about that rally that strikes you, that you remember?

 

LE [00:30:14] No, I can’t remember – so many speakers and so I can’t remember other than that. A lot of our staff were there. Our staff was really an active staff.

 

KN [00:30:33] And then. So you retired in 1989?

 

LE [00:30:40] Yeah.

 

KN [00:30:41] And looking back at your years of activity in the Surrey Teachers’ Association and the BCTF, what are your most memorable recollections about that experience? What do you remember most about your years as a teacher activist?

 

LE [00:31:05] Well, besides that one-day strike because that stands out the fact that

living and working conditions, we made tremendous advances – you know – in teacher rights and student rights too and so on. And I advised them to enforce that in the school. So we said 30 is the limit, period!

 

LE [00:31:37] I remember the first day after we went back to school, and I looked around — I had thirty-five desks in my class. So I went to the janitor and I said “you have too many desks in my class – You’ve got five in the back — take them out!”

 

LE [00:31:57] And he said “Well you told me to. ” and I said “listen – my class can only

have 30, so take five out.” And they did. The teachers started the same thing. And then the board said, if new kids came in, they wanted the teachers to agree to take up to two more

than that. I said “not in my class, no, because, why not start a new class with 26 and 27 instead of having some classes with only two when you know the maximum was 30.” But it was a rule written for years. And another thing I recall that we got rid of was this idea of temporary teachers. Teachers were teaching for five and six years as temporaries. You know that was just a way to not guarantee them any job. They could be fired, you know, they could be sent this and there So we fought that we had succeeded to a great

degree.

 

KN [00:33:00] Okay.

 

LE [00:33:02] You were involved a little bit in the issue of teacher transfers. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?.

 

LE [00:33:08] I worked with the BCTF on that one. Well it started up with two teachers from Surrey being transferred by the school board really. I don’t know if it’s the superintendent was responsible for that, but they were transferred, and they were punitive transfers, really. The evangelical people came out with this idea of a “values school”. Now, we had a meeting with the superintendent we said, “all those schools are values schools”. And he said, well he would authorize these people to make rules for this values school…

So they had to wear a uniform, and I said, “uh-uh-uh no, none of that”. So a fight began, and then two teachers from this school in Surrey, I can’t even remember the name the school elementary school. They were two of the parents in the area, they wanted to

convert this school into a values school. So they went to the parents and told them that it’s really a religious movement. It’s got nothing to do with education. And they were transferred, you see, because in that, they wanted that area to be a values school there.

These people went house to house so they moved them out, at least they transferred them. And now, I feel that’s not right. So I went to the superintendent and he said, well – it was his authority to do that, blah, blah, blah. And I said according to the Shcool Act there is no such thing as a punitive transfer. That’s what you’re doing. So we had a big kerfuffle over that. I went to the board and the board supported the superintendent’s move you know. So then I went to Victoria. And – what’s his name – a professor at UBC was the Minister of Education. He was a prof at UBC.

 

KN [00:35:13] Charles Ungerleider? No.

 

LE [00:35:21] Anyhow, he was the person in charge.

 

KN [00:35:22] Then this would have been what year roughly?.

 

LE [00:35:24] He was the Minister of Education.

 

KN [00:35:26] What year was this?

 

LE [00:35:28] Mm hmm. I can’t even recall what year it was.

 

LE [00:35:48] Can’t remember the year. Minister McGraw something like that. Anyhow,

he was a Minister so we went, we couldn’t get past the board – they wouldn’t change their mind, so we went to the Minister. And I wrote exactly the situation what happened. Blah blah blah blah.

 

LE [00:36:02] And I went up the superintendent and I said Lloyd I contacted the Minister and he’s gonna give a decision, and I think you got to admit that I have the right to do that.

And I said, “you wait and see, he’s not going to agree with you”. And the Minister ruled in favour of the teachers.

 

KN [00:36:27] Was this McGeer?

 

LE [00:36:28] Yeah, Pat McGeer.

 

LE [00:36:31] Pat McGeer ruled that the teachers are not to be transferred.

 

KN [00:36:34] Really?

 

LE [00:36:34] Oh yes. Jack Evans was the superintendent, but he wasn’t a nasty guy you know. He admitted that defeat, you see. But that was one that I figured that. So after that, the BCTF asked me to support teachers who had been illegally transferred. I went to Nanaimo because one teacher there was illegally transferred. And won again.

 

LE [00:37:06] Because, you know the law. You can transfer somebody for educational purposes but not to punish them for something that they believe. And that was the case. So I felt good about that too.

 

KN [00:37:19] Well that was good. Very good.

 

KN [00:37:28] Okay, Is there anything else in your whole teaching experience or active experience that you want to tell us about?

 

LE [00:37:39] Not really. I can’t think of anything.

 

KN [00:37:42] Well you’ve covered it. It’s been quite an experience overall. So do you have a message for young activists in the Surrey Teachers’ Association today? They are just getting involved. Do you have any message for them?

 

LE [00:37:55] Well I think that they all should try to find out their history. It’s necessary for them to know their history. It’s like knowing your own history, you know. It’s good to know, because too many people take things for granted – it was always like that. But it wasn’t always like that. And there is room for improvement. And if you don’t become active it’s not going to change. You see, you have to come out of the forest and say that I want this changed.

 

LE [00:38:21] You draw as much support as you can, and do something – some kind of leadership – instead of sitting back and waiting for things to change. That’s always been that way. We had to fight with the principals, the administrators, and that’s why they had to move to thier own organization – because that was a kind of a private club somehow”.

 

LE [00:38:49] As a matter of fact, this is something I should mention, but maybe the last thing. As I said our school had a very powerful staff committee. We invited the superintendent to come over to talk about staffing. He came over there, and after the meeting he came to me, and I knew what was on his mind. He said “I have a position to give you.” “What sort of position, what kind of position?” He said, “I’ll offer you the Assistant Director of Adult Education.” I said, “I have no interest in that – none!” And he’s telling me the benefits, and I’d get more money and blah blah blah. But I knew why he was saying that…

KN [00:39:38] He was trying to buy you off.

 

LE [00:39:38] Yes, he was. He was! And I said to myself, I am a teacher, I’m a high school teacher. What am I doing teaching – not even teaching — being an administrator iin night school? So I want to sit there and twiddle my thumbs because I’ll get more money? So I just let him know, no, I’m not interested in that. I just thougth of that you know, because when I told my wife – my wife said “you know, you could have made far more money if you took the job.” I said, “yeah, but I don’t think I would have lasted.” That’s not my style at all.

 

KN [00:40:18] Good story.

 

LE [00:40:19] I can boast that maybe I was the first — or the second, I think there’s one woman who was president before me – who never became an administrator. Before that, they all became administrators.

 

KN [00:40:33] That’s right.

 

LE [00:40:33] Because you didn’t get tough with the school board because then you’re not gonna. Hal Sinclair, his daughter is <uncleaer> too. Hal Sinclair, when he put Surrey in

dispute – he was the bargaining person – he never was considered for a position – an administrative position. And all staff voted that be become an administrator. And they made him an administrator. That’s the. it was kinda close to retirement. So he was

blacklisted more or less, because of that, because of putting Surrey in dispute.

 

KN [00:41:24] Wow.

 

LE [00:41:24] And his daughter, you know his daughter very well.

 

KN [00:41:25] I know.

 

Bailey Garden [00:41:25] That’s great, thank you so much, Lloyd. That’s everything.

 

KN [00:41:25] Yes. Thank you. That’s a great interview, again.