Statement from Karen Bradley
Board Chair
The Old School Community Gathering Place
March 9, 2024
There are two foundational and inherent conflicts that (I believe) have led to this challenging moment for the Old School. One is the issue that I have been speaking out about for almost a year: the navigation between being Chair of the Board (a volunteer oversight position) and the essential role of Executive Director— the person who works with staff to manage the projects, address the building needs, deal with budgets and personnel concerns on a day-to-day basis.
The other extremely challenging issue is the government vs local concerns. The evolving housing and food crises allowed the Old School to become increasingly aware of the need for boots-on-the-ground responses. And governments have responded with pots of funding for a variety of projects, mostly short term but locally driven.
Until this winter. Solutions for winter sheltering came quickly and without much forethought. We responded to the opportunities because we had to save lives. A series of rapid-fire responses ensued. We were offered a winter shelter but because of the particular limitations of that space and location, only people with certain profiles could be there. The specific challenges of this shelter are lessons learned.
We had also been in discussions with the former St. Philip Neri church about a short-term shelter there specifically for the vulnerable people in our community. That short-term shelter did not materialize.
Instead, the Department of Community Services offered us pallet houses on the church property, with additional funding for renovations of the church from another funder. There was a catch, however. Pallet houses had to be run for 5-7 years in order to get the annual funding that would support them. While this offered the multi-year support necessary for hiring professional staff, including an ED, it was a huge commitment of the building and of the Old School staff, and at a cost of not being able to propose effective ways to do the project in a rural village, housing local people in need.
The months of budget wrangling with the Department of Community Services over the changing requirements and our inability to get them to listen to the particular needs of THIS community has led to an impasse.
The two challenges are real and painful. Because of the board’s seeming unwillingness to support housing going forward and a perceived threat to the Old School’s reputation, a few board members decided that the solution to the challenges was to ask for my resignation.
It is my opinion that the request for my resignation was a fear-based decision. Despite all that the staff and I had been doing and discussing during the day-to-day problem solving, and all that we understood from the vulnerable people seeking food, mental health, and housing support, my understanding is that board wants to simply say no to housing projects.
For the past months, those of us doing the work, including the church people, have spoken of coming from awareness, learning, concern, compassion, and love. It has been important to fight for what works (the lessons learned are quite real) rather than simply taking on bad policies and one-size-fits-all projects.
The board has not listened to staff input and instead has come into the school with an agenda to clean up what they seem to think is a mess I somehow created by myself. But I am clear on several aspects:
I am not the problem.
I have worked hard with staff to develop the possibility of multi-year core funding so that the organization can hire a professional ED who could then work with a governing board of supportive community members.
A volunteer Chair cannot also be the chief administrative officer of the organization. The day-to-day requires fulltime, salaried, professional leadership, accountable to a supportive board.
The crises in the community are not going away.
We need to work with government to address the crises effectively. Government needs to listen.
We need to operate from love, not fear.
By love, I do not mean we ignore the pain of people in our community, pretending all is going to be just fine. I also do not mean we try to fix it all by ourselves. No martyrs! I mean the hard, hard work of listening with compassion, working together, and fighting for effective results.