Ontario school boards. Habitually forgotten, they generally operate unobserved and ignored by the public, toiling away in the background, and rarely reaching the public conscience. Voter participation in trustee elections is low even among those who bother to participate in their local municipal elections, which happen concurrently and on the same ballot.
That has changed recently. Our locally-elected school boards across the province have been making the news on the regular, whether because of self-righteous and narcissistic zealots like we’ve seen recently with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, the censorship of ‘non-conforming’ literature at the Peel Regional School Board, disdain expressed towards police in Ottawa by again the OCDSB and Grand Erie District School Board, or the re-education and indoctrination programs such as those hosted by the Toronto District School Board, which led to the harassment, cancelling, and eventual suicide of a much beloved former principal.
Journalists like Brian Lilley and Randall Denley now openly question the value of school boards, while Education Minister Stephen Lecce is forced to issue orders for school boards to get back to basics, end the book banning, and allow uniformed police to participate in their child’s ‘career day’ opportunities. Justifiably, but perhaps not understandably, there is an open movement by the province to take greater control of our local school boards. I say “not understandably”, because there seems to have been no public discussion of reform, only abolition or provincial control.
I believe that the school board system need not be abolished, but must be reformed.
Here’s are just a few suggestions we should all carefully consider and examine:
Candidates for trustee should have, or have had, a child in a school within the board they seek to be elected to;
For rural school boards, a representative from each municipal council represented by that board should be appointed; further, this municipal council appointee would be required to hold quarterly public meetings in their municipality to discuss matters before the local school board and to gauge the preferences of the electors they represent on the pressing issues of the day, and bring those positions to the school board;
Ensure that all school board meetings are open to parents, facility capacity considered; and that these meetings must also be streamed in real time and recorded for general public viewing;
All municipalities must be required to publish the professional contact points for the elected trustees and appointed councillors for the school boards in their jurisdiction, as well as the roles and responsibilities of trustees, and links to each relevant school board’s website in a separate and visible part of the municipal website.
We don’t need the province to come in like a parent and take control of our straying school boards, we need local parents to step in and take back control.
The influence of special interest, public service unions, teachers’ unions, and others who are using our school boards for self-interest, self-aggrandizement, and/or personal agendas need to be abolished, not the school boards.
I welcome your ideas on how we might reform our school board system, while securing local influence on decision-making. Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments section, or feel free to email us at info@localaction.ca.