City council to support trustees in letter to Premier Ford

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In a unanimous decision, Stratford city council has agreed to compose and send a letter supporting “provincial consultation and transparency regarding potential changes to English public school board governance.”

At the March 23 meeting, the Avon Maitland District School Board (AMDSB)’s board of trustees made a public petition for support when chair Michael Bannerman and fellow Stratford trustee Deepika Mishra delegated that evening.

“Trustees serve as a vital bridge to the function of governance,” Bannerman said. “We advocate for the voices and priorities of families in our local communities at the board level. At the same time, we help bridge the gap between our communities and decision makers at the provincial level, often helping to shape how policies, protocols and curriculum decisions developed in places like urban Toronto are understood in and applied to communities like ours …”

“I would like to highlight the particular impact these changes may have on immigrant and newcomer families or in our community,” Mishra added. “For many of these families, our education system is far more complex and unfamiliar with very different expectations, processes and points of access than what they may have experienced before. Trustees often serve as an appropriate, approachable and locally grounded point of contact for somebody who's very new to this region. And they reach out to them for guidance, clarification and efficacy when we are unsure how to navigate the system. Removing or distancing that layer of representation risks creating a greater sense of disconnection and uncertainty, leaving families without a clear pathway to have their concerns heard or addressed.”

Bannerman and Mishra reiterated the points made in a March 2 letter to Minister of Education Paul Calandra and Premier Doug Ford, in which the local public board argued for the trustee system to continue. In that letter they further argued for the ministry to make the research, evidence, data analysis, policy reviews, stakeholder input and performance evaluations public, to make any decision on the whole system transparent.

In September of last year, Calandra spoke candidly through various traditional media and social media outlets about what he called a problem in the governance of local schools, writing on his Facebook page: “The current school board governance structure is based on an outdated system that needs to be modernized. Our focus is to provide students with better outcomes and certainty, and we are looking to finalize governance changes as soon as possible.”

Calandra was speaking after the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board (BHNCDSB), the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) came under intense scrutiny and criticism over its spending, prompting the province to formally supervise the Near North District School Board, the OCDSB, the Peel District School Board (PDSB), the TVDSB, the TDSB, the TCDSB and the York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB).

Just this past week, Calandra promised reporters with Global News that “significant change” is coming to the system.

“It's very important for democracy to be able to have representation from citizens, for education, for governance, for many reasons,” said Coun. Jo-Dee Burbach when moving the motion for council to write the letter. “Efficiencies, as I said, it can't always be the overarching goal. It was very interesting. I listened to a call-in show about this very debate about whether school board trustees should be replaced by an administrator, and someone called in and said, ‘Well, school board trustees they’re such a huge drain on the budget. They spend all the money.’ And that actually isn't true. School board trustees here in the district have earned about $6,000 a year plus expenses, so for nine of them, it's less than $200,000 for the trustees. So we know that they're not doing it for money. They're definitely doing it because they want to serve the public. The administrators that the government has been putting in the place of the school boards have been earning $350,000, so it is actually a little bit more expensive to have an administrator rather than a democratic process.”