Vancouver School Board Renames Schools to Names British Columbians Can't Pronounce — While Academics Slide

Instead of focusing on student outcomes, the Vancouver School Board — and school boards across BC — are spending time and resources renaming schools to Indigenous names most British Columbians cannot pronounce. This is what the NDP calls education policy.

Dallas Brodie — Facebook, April 30, 2026  ·  44,000+ views  ·  1,800+ reactions

The NDP's Education Priority: Symbols Over Substance

BC's education system is in measurable decline. Provincial reading and math scores have slipped. Teacher shortages persist in rural communities. Classroom sizes in Vancouver regularly exceed recommended limits. Wait times for learning disability assessments stretch to years in some districts.

The Vancouver School Board's response? Rename the schools.

Across BC, school boards aligned with the NDP government's reconciliation agenda have been systematically replacing school names — names that parents, students, teachers, and alumni have used for generations — with Indigenous language names that the vast majority of British Columbians have never heard and cannot pronounce. No referendum. No community vote. Decisions made by appointed trustees answering to a government ideology, not to the families who use these schools every day.

The Renaming Campaign Across BC

The Vancouver School Board is not alone. School boards across the province — from Surrey to the Okanagan to the Island — have participated in or are considering similar renaming campaigns. Each one follows the same template:

• A formal land acknowledgement process identifies the "traditional territory"
• The school board consults with a local First Nation or Indigenous organization
• A new name is selected — often in a language that has no written form widely taught in BC schools
• The community is informed, not consulted
• Signage, stationery, websites, and formal records are updated at taxpayer expense

The cost of each renaming — signs, administrative updates, communications, events — is rarely disclosed. The cumulative cost across dozens of schools and school boards has never been totalled by the province.

What Parents Are Actually Asking For

BC parents are not asking school boards to erase Indigenous history. They are asking for their children to be able to read, do math, and graduate with skills that prepare them for work and life.

A 2025 PISA assessment placed BC students below the national average in reading comprehension for the first time in the program's history. One in four BC Grade 4 students cannot meet the basic provincial reading standard. The teacher-to-student ratio in BC is among the worst in Canada for a province of its wealth.

These are solvable problems. They require funding, staffing, and administrative focus. Instead, school boards are spending meeting hours, staff time, and public money on renaming exercises that no parent in a focus group ever identified as a priority.

David Eby's Government Set the Tone

This is not a rogue school board acting independently. The NDP provincial government has explicitly directed public institutions — including school boards — to advance reconciliation through symbolic action. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), passed in 2019, created a legislative framework that school boards interpret as requiring exactly these kinds of changes.

When Dallas Brodie and other critics ask whether this is the best use of education resources, the NDP's answer — implicit in their silence — is yes. Renaming is reconciliation. Reconciliation is non-negotiable. Therefore, renaming is non-negotiable.

The families whose children can't read at grade level might disagree.

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