ST ALBERT - A parent of two children attending Joseph M. Demko School said he was disappointed but not surprised when anti-2SLGBTQ+ pamphlets were discovered in the school's playground.
The Demko school in Jensen Lakes was one of two in St. Albert where anti-2SLGBTQ+ printed material was recently left in playgrounds.
The parent, who requested his name not be used out of concern for his family's safety, said his family has noticed a significant presence of similar attitudes in other parents and students.
“It just really made me disappointed,” he said, about the incidents at Joseph M. Demko and Muriel Martin last week, which the RCMP is now investigating.
“Demko is actually a really wonderful school and really accepting of our kids, and it's just really disappointing that somebody in the community thought that this would be appropriate and this is how to approach the issue.”
“Any LGBTQ+ kids at school now feel like they have a target on their back,” he said.
The parent said he felt the material left in school playgrounds was a continuation of the ongoing “culture wars,” and to see children be targeted with a hateful ideology was distressing.
“That's the scariest part of it all,” he said. “That's just shocking to me.”
'The mental health of our kids right now is at an all-time low'
Kelsey Robbins, the executive director of Outloud, a support and advocacy non-profit organization for local 2SLGBTQ+ youth, told the Gazette events like what happened at Joseph M. Demko and Muriel Martin contribute to what the organization is calling a mental health and suicide crisis among St. Albert's youth.
“The mental health of our kids right now is at an all-time low,” Robbins said. “It's something that everybody is talking about; the suicide rates are ridiculous, we have kids younger than ever calling for wellness checks on their friends, and this is the reason.”
In April, the Gazette reported Outloud asked city council for $50,000 in one-time funding to hire more staff to support St. Albert's 2SLGBTQ+ youth community after seeing more than 12 suicide attempts in the past year. Council didn't grant the organization's funding request.
“This is meant to cause fear and intimidate, and that's exactly what they're trying to do,” Robbins said of those who put the pamphlets in the school playgrounds. “The kids are scared — that's the impact we see every day at Outloud.”
Both the Demko parent and Robbins said they felt the school and school division responded appropriately to the situation last week.
The parent was pleased to see school administration send an email to all parents informing them about the situation, and for reporting the incident to the RCMP.
Parents taking their children to school on June 26 saw and removed the material from the playground before it's believed any students found it.
“I think it's awesome that some parents saw this crap and picked it up and removed it — good on them,” the parent said.
Robbins, meanwhile, said they were pleased to know school administrators made it clear the school and school division were staunchly against the ideology the pamphlets espoused.
“If we don't talk about what's going on for these communities, then it will never change,” Robbins said. “It also gave the parents or the caregivers the opportunity to decide what tools they needed to put in place to support their youth if their youth did access or see or hear about it.”
“Reporting it to the police is the most important part right now, because these are targeted attacks. These are people that are targeting this community.”
Power said now that school is finished for the summer, division administration plan to create guidelines for staff to deal with future instances of targeting.
