Every now and then I'm stopped on the street and asked by a broadcast or print reporter to comment on a story they're working on. I decline and identify myself as a reporter for a local newspaper. I figure reporters shouldn't be interviewing reporters to get a "regular person on the street" comment.

Last week I was watching Global B.C.'s News Hour Final to catch up on what happened at the school board meeting, which I couldn't attend.

It was the night when the board adopted the 2010/11 budget. Vision Vancouver and COPE trustees had spent weeks blaming the provincial Liberal government--namely Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid for the $16 million shortfall.

The reporter interviewed two "parents" for reaction. One was identified as "Mike Klassen, parent" Here's the exchange:

Reporter: And some parents aren't happy with the board either.

Klassen: I'm afraid that this board has done a lot of--a big disservice to our schools by scaring the living daylights out of parents and making them feel like there isn't a future for this school system. The fact is it's a fantastic school system.

Who is Klassen? He has a child at McBride annex--one of the schools being considered for closure, so it makes sense he'd be interested in the story.

But I'm not sure "parent" is an adequate attribution. You be the judge.

Klassen is listed as "editor" for citycaucus.com, a website devoted to civic politics and co-founded by Daniel Fontaine, who was former NPA mayor Sam Sullivan's chief of staff.

Klassen describes himself as a veteran of civic, provincial and federal election campaigns for the past three decades and the site points out he's played a "pivotal role providing communications and organizational support to the successful 2004 Knowards campaign alongside then city councillor Sam Sullivan and twice managed the election campaigns of a provincial cabinet minister."

Who was that minister? Liberal Colin Hansen.

In Klassen's post about the school board meeting on citycaucus.com, he takes aim at the Vision/COPE alliance on the board, remarking, "At last night's budget meeting we heard all the usual rhetoric. We saw a few parent reps in support of a fledgling Mandarin program, but the room was otherwise filled with union reps in support of the Vision/COPE trustees war on Victoria."

Columnist Allen Garr has mentioned Klassen in the Courier before, in January 2009. Garr wrote that Global's Tony Parsons interviewed Klassen as "one citizen" who tore into the city giving the mayor [Vision's Gregor Robertson] "heat" about the city's reaction to a snow storm.

My fellow reporter Mike Howell also pointed out in a 2009 12th and Cambie column that Klassen was captured in a Vancouver Sun photo pumping the fist of Premier Gordon Campbell at Campbell's campaign office and Klassen was sporting a Gordon Campbell badge.

Julianne Doctor, the other parent interviewed in the TV report, was also identified simply as a "parent."

She's outgoing chair of the District Parent Advisory Council, and as such was elected to speak on behalf of parents, so it's reasonable that she would comment on the budget.

But Doctor also has a political bent and acknowledges being a "proud waving socialist."

She hasn't maintained a membership in any political party, but has joined Vision, COPE and the NDP at various times to try and get a particular individual elected, including school board chair and Vision trustee Patti Bacchus. Doctor said she's attended party fundraisers when invited. She's also a founding member of B.C. Society for Public Education, a group that evolved out of Save Our Schools.

noconnor@vancourier.com