For the third time in the past five years, a Nova Scotia School Board has been fired by a provincial Minister of Education, a remarkable record for a province with only nine elected education boards. Last year, Prince Edward Island Education Minister Doug Currie also wielded the axe, firing the entire Eastern PEI School Board in the wake of prolonged school closure skirmishes.
On Tuesday November 29, 2011, Nova Scotia’s Education Minister Ramona Jennex shocked everyone in Atlantic Canada by announcing that the elected South Shore Regional School Board (SSRSB) had been “fired” for breaching its code of ethics and proper governance practices. Acting on a School Board Review report produced by Deloitte management consultants, she told the twelve member Board of Trustees in Bridgewater, NS, that they had been dismissed from office. She also announced that the Board had not only been been sacked, but replaced with a senior educrat, Judith Sullivan-Corney, formerly a Deputy Minister with the Nova Scotia Government. (Media Advisory -“Minister Moves to Take Control of SSRSB” – NSDoE, 29 Nov. 2011)
The Minister’s unilateral decision stunned the Chair of the SSRSB veteran Trustee Elliott Payzant, and his 12-member elected who had asked the Minister in June 2011 to audit their governance practices to clear the air. The small Board, established in 2004 with only 32 schools and 7,400 students, had certainly captured the Minister’s attention. It all started in late February 2011 when the elected Trustees voted 10 to 2 to suspend the school closure review process affecting 12 of the 32 schools, overturning a staff recommendation. Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake was completely miffed, since the only two supporting the process were her Board Chair and Vice-Chair Gary Mailman, the Trustee supposedly overseeing governance matters.
The real catalyst for the public controversy was the South Shore weekly, The Progress Bulletin,which had used a Freedom of Information (FOIPOP) request to unearth hundreds of private e-mails suggesting improper governance practices. Those revelations, covered extensively in the South Shore News and The Chronicle Herald, suggested that a group of 4 to 8 trustees were meeting and strategizing to save their community schools, in the wake of their controversial earlier decision to close the historic Lunenburg Academy. When the e-mails were made public, it was also clear that Trustee Karen Reinhardt and Board Chair Payzant were both deeply involved in the behind-the-scenes politicking. http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/072611/letters/index006.php
The initial Halifax Chronicle Herald editorial (Nov. 30, 2011), accepted the Minister’s decision and reasoning at face value. Closer scrutiny of the Deloitte report (22 November 2011) led governance experts to draw different conclusions. http://www.ednet.ns.ca/pdfdocs/school_boards/PerformanceReviewReportSSRSB.pdf The Management Consultants hired by the DoE brought a corporate governance philosophy to their task, assessing the elected Board according to a clinical model seemingly unaware of the complexities and intricacies of local politics and the trustee’s representational role in the system.
The governance template used to assess the South Shore Board reflected the same managerial orientation. By assuming that the Superintendent was the “gatekeeper” and source of all agenda information, the political actions of trustees taking autonomous policy positions and giving voice to public concerns were seen as destabilizing for the system. Some elected trustees acted inappropriately, particularly in the realm of conflict of interest, and deserved sanctions. On three of six criteria, the elected Board was found in contravention of the governance regulations, but they were judged to be following provincial budget and policy directives. None of the actual recommendations specifically referenced dismissing the entire board. That move was clearly the Minister’s decision.
The “One-Woman-Board,” Ms. Sullivan-Corney, received a slap happy reception from the Superintendent and senior staff in the Bridgewater Board Office. That response stood in stark contrast to the growing media criticism and the chill felt by South Shore parents left without trustees in the local communities. Four or five of the “fired” Trustees were highly respected local citizens, most notably Marg Forbes of Bridgewater and Lunenburg physician Dr. John Jenkins. Some Trustees like Reinhardt were mavericks who stood up strongly for local communities.
Denied their public voice, South Shore parents were not about to be silenced by the Minister or the Superintendent. Within three days, groups of parents in Hebbville, Petite Riviere, Chester, and Lunenburg began to complain loudly about the decision, expressing fear that many of the 12 threatened schools would now be closed. Parent Sherry Doucet of Hebbville spoke out in The Chronicle Herald and Michelle Wamboldt of Petite Riviere was galvanized into action, pushing forward with plans to hold a Small School Summit on January 21, 2012 at the NSCC in Bridgewater. http://thechronicleherald.mobi/novascotia/38279-south-shore-parents-fear-schools-will-be-closed-after-all
Previous decisions to fire Nova Scotia school boards, taken in 2006 ( HalifaxRSB and StraitRSB) by former Education Minister Karen Casey, went far more smoothly. Defenders of small schools now carry much more influence, the “dismissed” Trustees won far more sympathy among the public — and the usual public backlash against all School Boards fizzled when the real underlying issues surfaced.
Public statements by Vic Fleury, Chair of the NSSBA, that the School Board Association was never consulted before the axe fell simply added fuel to the fire. Faced with mounting public concern, the Nova Scotia Department of Education was compelled, a week later, to send out 24,000 leaflets by mail in an attempt to reassure worried parents and families. A one-woman-board was now presented as the answer for those seeking to be heard. http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/40544-education-department-reassures-parents-after-school-board%E2%80%99s-firing
How common in North America is the practice of dismissing elected School Boards? Why have Nova Scotia Education Ministers come to use that power with such frequency? What is wrong with the School Board governance model as presently conceived in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island? What can be done to reform school board governance and, at the same time, to restore public confidence in local education democracy?
This has been a long and agonizing process for students, parents, educators and citizens living and working in the Nova Scotia South Shore region. The collapse of the board puts a pall over the region and the future of rural education for the forseeable future. Recent propaganda leaflets to parents will not change the tone of this event until there is a change in the school review process. One which includes the community and students future prosperity; both in education and and as a catalyst for growth.
Since the program review back in 2005? and subsequent arrival of Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, the school review process in the SSRSB region has been encumbered by centralist baggage out of proportion to the requirements of education on the south shore of Nova Scotia.
Politics played a central role in this digressive tale going back to the last election where Rodney Macdonald unveiled his government’s 305 million dollar plan to construct new schools throughout the province.
In the South Shore region, then candidate Pam Birdsall (now MLA), quite rightly questioned the wisdom of this initiative and supported the sustainability of small schools in Lunenburg, Riverport and Centre. Options were proposed to avoid the massive capital expenditures in the region through restoration of existing schools; a much more affordable solution which would retain the Lunenburg Academy, Lunenburg junior/senior high school, and develop a new grade configuration possibly saving Riverport as well.
Fears of out-migration being accelerated were serious factors in a region with looming employment problems which are manifest today.
Unfortunately all three parties were bound by election commitments to uphold the previous government’s decision to close schools and consolidate. Too bad this initiative was not subject to review. Even more disconcerting was the prevailing editorials from the South Shore News promoting the closure of the regions schools in favour of the big box. Never once did this paper address the issue of school review reforms.
Pam Birdsall was realigned by NDP advisor Dan O’Connor during the campaign by issuing a letter supporting the new post modern P to 9’Bunker’ (Bluenose Academy) now constructed in Lunenburg, a UNESCO heritage town. All that was left was the sod turning on a cold and grisely day.
Today, with the prospect of a second round of school reviews and potential closures, a list was published with 12 schools up for possible review. That would account for roughly 40% (12 of 32) of the schools in this region. The rest is essentially a divide and conquer routine so often played out in the school board politics of small towns/regions, and myopic educrats who are intent on avoiding the larger picture of rural Nova Scotia sustainability.
There was never a review of the staff on this issue. How could there be. Imagine the ramifications. Former MOE Marilyn More, stated that school boards were a ‘fourth level of government’ in her estimation. Perhaps they have just become a buffer zone for the educrats. That is until boards decide to question the motives of the staff. This is a recipe for disaster when it comes to the well being of the students and educational stability.
We can teach our children to leave, but centralization surely will not teach them to come back. I hope the upcoming Small School Summit ( January 21, 2012 at NSCC, Bridgewater) proves to be a catalyst for change.
On Facebook, this question has generated quite a debate! Here is a sample of the lively exchange:
PEGGY CHISHOLM, Fall River, NS: Wow, so the Superintendent got out- voted big time! And the elected members of the community conspired to vote together! As if THAT has never been done before! So, an investigation had to be done to see how they possibly carried this out and it was found that they exchanged e-mails, and then they all got fired? And now the Superintendant is happy? Is that pretty much the senario?
FAYE MINGO, Halifax: One of these days, parents and the public will remember they are the ones paying taxes to hire elected officials and will, again, exert their force. The education system has forgotten who pays their salaries. One-woman or one-man boards are nothing more than a dictatorship. The public pay taxes and ELECT school boards to represent them to make sure people in the education system are doing their jobs for their children. How can it be legal that anyone in a position in the education system can fire the people the public have elected and paid taxes to hire? Wow!
ROBERT BERARD, MSVU, Halifax: One can legitimately question whether local school board elections have measured up to any standard of democracy. Neither is it clear that they have effectively represented the whole community, most of whom never bother to vote in school board elections.
FAYE MINGO: Anything can be questioned and should be at times but someone must be voting for school board members because they are elected. The argument that school board elections may not measure up to any standard of democracy pales in the shadow of… dictatorships. All democracies may not measure up to the ideal democracy whatever that may be. As it is, it’s disgraceful how many people don’t vote in regular elections in North America considering how precious the right to vote is and what impact one vote can have. If fewer people are voting these days than would be expected, does that mean that all the municipal, provincial, and federal representatives should be fired by one person so he or she will be the only voice? Punishing the whole class because of one or two who are quilty is a travesty of justice in my opinion and is a reflection of the lack of insight, leadership, and imagination on the part of the one in the position to do the firing.
ROBERT BERARD: Not at all; but there is a question of how many and which boards should be elected. Hospital boards? School boards? Boards to govern the police and fire services? I’d agree with you, however, that if we are going to have fully elected school boards, we should probably let them serve out their terms.
I will preface this by including the information that I have born witness firsthand to what has occured on the South Shore in regards to Education.
To this day I am still amazed at what transpired, going back to 2007, sitting in an auditorium, listening, along with a packed audience, to speaker after speaker (even students heaven forbid) talk about the need for our schools. Even the mayor of Lunenburg spoke (imagine that) and finally the meeting was turned over to Dr. Jim Gunn.
What I remember most was walking away from that meeting actually feeling secure about the future of our schools and the education they would receive there.
What happened after that meeting I can only speculate, and it isn’t pretty.
Shortly thereafter, a provincial election was in the offing and promises were flying. Large amounts of capital money were being offered up and there was no shortage of recipients willing to accomodate.
School boards suddenly fell in line, regardless of the opinions of their electorate.
Entire town councils suddenly voted unanimously to accept recommendations (suspect from the beginning, had they even been made yet?) to give up their high school and close the historic Lunenburg Academy without any input at all from the residents of the town.
Some of those that fell in line with the dying government of the day were rewarded before that governments departure.
The future incoming government ran a candidate that spoke against the closure of the rural schools initially, but after a letter confirming the war rooms decision differed from hers appeared, the die was cast, and soon she was posing for pictures at the sod turning ceremony.
Not only was the initial decision by the outgoing government flawed and suspect, but astonishingly, the failure of either potential replacement government to even consider questioning the decision was even more puzzling.
Ahhhhh, but elections do mysterious things.
The local media was suspect as well in my opinion, never challenging the wisdom of any of the decisions that had been made, interestingly enough, only doing any serious kind of in depth investigation only after a school board vote threatened to derail their prevailing attitude towards consolidation.
And now you have the installment of a single government employee assuming the position of a democratically elected board of representatives.
Looking back now, it is hard to imagine how the consequences of those decisions have effected myself and my family. A year and a half ago we made the decision to sell our home in Lunenburg and move to an area that has education as it’s primary focus, and not politics and personal agendas.
They say hindsight is 20/20, so looking back at what has transpired since we left, I am feeling somewhat confident (vindicated perhaps) we made the right decision and have thrown away my glasses.
It seems to govern is being scrutinized more and more each day (see Chronicle Herald link below).
I have often heard the view that school reviews can be a good thing (usually by school board chairs or superintendents) . Usually programming is cited as the number one reason benefiting students in the educratic rush to recruit their parents to the centralist portfolio and expensive new capital projects.
For those parents who sense the impact of school closures on their community, the most logical conduit for their concerns is the local school board rep.
This is where educratic policy and the accumulation of data ( which should have sources I might add) and methodology are important factors for the school boards to assess.
This is also where an independent facilitator comes in handy when information is being requested by the local SAC’s as parents use the democratic process to work with and through school board reps.
Was there a breakdown on this stage of concern, and is it becoming increasingly difficult for boards to justify the review and eventual closure of rural schools without reliable information and data?
http://thechronicleherald.ca/#
The South Shore News continues to provide cover for the SSRSB. In the December 7 edition, Stacey Colwell reported that the “New (One Woman) Board” was “not ruling out school reviews” this coming spring.
“I’ll rely on looking at the information and having the superintendent bring forward to me what staff believes is important,” said Judith Sullivan-Corney in a November 29 interview, noting there is legislation in place regarding that and she has a duty to consider it.
“One of the reasons I think it’s important is it’s not only about buildings and about the budget, it is about ‘are we doing the right things for students.’ School reviews can be a good thing.”
She said although it is reasonable to expect some schools will be reviewed, it’s possible none will undergo the formal year-long process.
“It really depends what comes forward.”
Comment:
What comes forward? From whom, to whom? Sounds like a mighty closed decision-making circle. The “big boxers” now have achieved their elusive consensus. But will the good citizens of the South Shore take notice?
This Educrat-in-Chief does not sound like a caretaker. Such statements merely feed the suspicion that removing the elected Board makes closing schools so much easier. Any such moves should be postponed until democracy is restored on the South Shore of Canada’s Ocean Playground.
It is helpful for parents to experience the chanels of process when attempting to obtain information as it relates to school boards and their children’s educational future.
Attending one of the many “information sessions” provided by the SSRSB during school past reviews, declining enrolment was explained ad infinitum to parents as the train moved closer to closure. So, later I asked my school board rep for some data on future projections for declining enrolment pertaining to grades 9 to 12 in the South Shore region. My school board rep referred me to a staffer. That staffer informed me there was no data available on my request.
Now I know all requests like this go across the superinendant’s desk first.
No wonder there is so many in camera meetings these days!
Communities facing school closures are threatened, but my good friend Malkin Dare ( Founder of Society for Quality Education) sees an opportunity, provided we rise to the challenge.
Malkin points out that the written word for crisis in Chinese consists of two characters – one representing danger and the other representing opportunity. “The school closure crisis is in fact offering school boards an opportunity – if they can only see it.”
Here is her incredibly insightful take on the situation and the options currently not being explored:
“In order to see this opportunity, school boards must abandon their current view of schools as big boxes dedicated solely to the education of children. If they cling to this view, then they have no possible path other than closing dozens of schools. But if they think flexibly about schools, school boards can solve their excess capacity problems and in the process achieve better schools.
There are two possible ways to deal with the unused space in schools: use the unneeded space to generate extra income or sell off some of their white elephant big boxes and move the remaining students to a non-traditional space in the same neighbourhood.
The first option, that of making money by renting or selling the unused space to some other agency or agencies, offers certain advantages in terms of complementary services. For example, if a dentist were to rent out space in a school, he or she could give dental hygiene lessons to the students and look after their teeth. A public library could offer a much better selection than a standard school library. A private school is another obvious choice, and the two schools could cooperate in various ways – for example, sharing buses or maintaining an outdoor skating rink in winter.
The second option is to sell off some of the big-box schools and re-establish the schools in smaller, less expensive venues like church basements or community centres or unused commercial space. Once again, it would be great if complementary arrangements could be made. For example, if a school relocated to a YMCA, the children could benefit from the many excellent athletic and recreational facilities there. If the school was housed in a church, perhaps the students could receive music lessons from the organist. If the school was in an unused wing of a university or community college, great lecturers and enrichment activities could be pursued.
One possible objection to this scheme is that the reconstituted schools would be too small to support the cost of a principal, and this is of course a valid objection. However, it is quite feasible to operate schools without principals. Swiss schools, for example, mostly operate without principals; instead, the teachers divide up the duties among themselves. And many Tim Horton’s outlets are too small to support a manager, and so they share a part-time manager with one or two other outlets. Flexibility is the key here.
Opportunities don’t always announce themselves with trumpets and gongs. Hidden deep inside the school closure crisis is the opportunity to create new and better schools. But the pain involved in reinventing schools makes it more likely that school boards will just keep on doing what they’ve always done in the past – simply closing community schools when enrolment shrinks.
The one thing that might tip the balance – making it more painful to close schools than to reinvent them – is very vigorous protest and resistance from the communities in question.”
Comment:
How rare in education: A little constructive, out-of-the box thinking — and a viable path forward, particularly in Maritime Canada, where the die has not yet been cast.
The actions of and at the SSRSB over the last 6 years raise many questions both procedural and political. It seems, however, that there can be no real resolution of the fundamental problems until we, Nova Scotians, have an informed discussion about how schools should be run. Only then can our government be in a position to decide whether a change in structure is necessary and, if so, what that change is.
School boards in Nova Scotia started having elected members included in the early 1980s if I recall correctly. By the late 1980s the boards were entirely composed of elected members. It’s probably time for a review of whether that system works.
Elections don’t always mean there is a democratic process. On the other hand, leaving the running of an institution to the “experts` doesn`t always provide the best results either. There are other models, most obvious locally is the advisory boards made of local citizens that are appointed to oversee hospital administrations.
One thing seems certain: elected school boards have often been no more than flack catchers and enablers for the decisions of school superintendents and DoE educrats, both operating on the outdated and mostly abandoned big box school theory of education.
Lunenburg is but one example of how an ill-informed, educrat-controlled, single-focus, elected board can damage a community by removing key elements of its infrastructure. However school boards are reformed, the communities in which they operate must be given more consideration, and perhaps influence, in the decision making process.
I agree with Malkin up to a point. The extra space can be rented and the entire “economics” argument goes out the window. Better is community use of schools to justify their continued opening by stuffing empty space with child care, adult ed, public medical clinics, government regional departments, city county services no matter the size. The school should only be closed when a majority of the parents want it to close and not before.
It rips the guts out of a community to lose its school. No business wants to locate where the CEOs own kids need long bus rides. The town of Durham in Ontario went into sharp decline when it lost its schools to a consolidated Hanover, Walkerton regional system.
The Deloitte report (on the SSRSB)contains this passage: “we heard from three board members who feel the staff are deliberately not providing information that has been requested, implying that staff and the superintendant have something to hide. We saw no reason to believe that this is the case”
So let’s consider this. Policy is the responsibility of the board (Deloitte) and information is the domain of the educrats. Staff should not be badgered by requests from the board which cause confusion and mistrust. Deloitte determined the staff’s actions were superior to that of the board, even though there was conflict about sources and methodology.
That raises the question as to what do school board reps have the right to inquire about? Especially pertaining to school reviews.
What access to information is allowed and accountable to the public through a school board rep?
Speaking of democracy, remember this guy? http://www.billcasey.ca/ he didn’t vote along with his party, the PC’s, led by Stephan Harper. He didn’t want changes made to the offshore deal, right? Well, he stood up in the House of Commons, voted the way he wanted and got the boot! So, tell me that there wasn’t e-mails going around, telling all the PC MP’s how to vote about this. And can somebody explain to the class what. “Party Whip” is? I think elected people anywhere should be able to vote their conscience, and not be fired or kicked out of the club. And , by the way, I’m not a huge fan of school boards in general. We have too many, they cost too much and we need to streamline the whole thing. So much drama.
I really like Malkin Dare’s way of thinking about how to educate our children. The methods proposed put the students more in touch with the community so they have an opportunity to really be educated. It seems that the superintendents and educrats think “education” only consists of what gets delivered to students when they are in their classroom seats.
If this kind of thinking had been applied in Lunenburg, we would still have P-12 education in town and we might even have “schools” in several different locations. Thanks to the SSRSB’s decisions we now have only one big box P-9 (in the public system) which has been designed, from all appearances, to blend in with the corrugated steel,industrial buildings within a couple of blocks of the new school.
Back to school boards: If elected board members cannot report back to the electorate, if they cannot ask questions, lobby or advocate on behalf of the electorate, if they cannot get answers to questions asked by the electorate, then I’d suggest their only purpose must be to serve as scape-goats for superintendents and educrats. In that case, they should all be dissolved so the real administrators can be made accountable.
The Deliotte report on the SSRSB also contains this recommendation: “The board is expected to work with the superintendent and senior staff to develop a multi-year strategic plan that sets prorities and assigns responsibilities to staff, influences the superintendent’s objectives, and assesses the impact of funding cuts, changing demographics, and first and formost the needs of the students and families. This plan is supposed to be developed by staff, with appropriate board guidance andapproval, and with the involvement of key stakeholders.”
I presume key stakeholders would be parents, SAC’s, parent teacher associations, etc., and I would also hope a plan like this could be developed with reliable and accurate information approved of by the superintendent whose “objectives” are transparent to the public?
IMO, there’s far more dysfunction at school boards than meets the eye. What is rarely, if ever, addressed is the misinformation provided by school board staff to the board members. How can a board make sound decisions based on incorrect/biased information?
Here is how it starts folks. One hundred and fifty eight million on “buildings” announced prior to the lead up to another election.
Who is earmarked for the wish list this time around? School boards usually publish their new school and renovations wish list to the government.
How much of this is creative accounting – and carried over from the last round of 305 million dollars toward schools Rodney Macdonald trotted out?
Which communities actually need these new schools and which communities will see their school closed against their wishes and consolidated into a big box; that is while funding and special needs assistants are cut owing to reduced budgets?
Will opposition parties agree to the announcements of new schools when it comes down to the election crunch?
Besides schools, what other government facilities are on the “building” list?
It is easy to see how school board governance can get snarled up in politiking.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/41147-ns-spend-610-million-roads-schools-other-projects
” Why have Nova Scotia Education Ministers come to use that power with such frequency? What is wrong with the School Board governance model as presently conceived in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island? What can be done to reform school board governance and, at the same time, to restore public confidence in local education democracy?”
What is wrong? The school board model is a model of control and compliance within a centralization format that reflects the top down approaches of the goals of the ones who have the authority and power, using change as the means to reflect what is good for the school board and its survival in its current form. Increased centralization leads to pseudo-democracy governance at the bottom of the food chain, for the express purpose to control and direct influence in values at the bottom – the local levels. Duplicity, acting in bad faith; deception by pretending to entertain one set of intentions while acting under the influence of another, is the adjective that does described the current school board governance models across Canada.
School boards where the school acts, as well as other statues have introduced duplicity, operating under the radar legal within the pseudo-democracy governance, to advance the goals of the top levels of the public education systems. School boards have become neutered, as well as being immune to anything that speaks of true democracy in action, and serving the needs of their students and communities at the local level – the bottom. It is why the Bluenose Academy was shut down, because the school no longer fit in the future plans of schools for the 21st century, but don’t tell that to the citizens at the bottom, we need to control their values and get them to change their values on a voluntary basis. The Bluenose Academy, went the way of the do-do bird as a school, to pay homage to nickle and diming the tourists, much like the 36 km of the Niagara Parkway from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Fort Erie has, paying homage to the tourists, and the locals be damn, their culture and values.
“The Vancouver School Board of Trustees,must improve its governance practices by: meeting all of its duties and responsibilities as defined by the School Act, balancing the need for stakeholder input with operational requirements and efficient decision making, clarifying the accountability of the Board of Trustees and addressing the perceived lack of trust, confidence and respect between the Board of Trustees and the district management, as well as addressing the perceived lack of integrity of the Board of Trustees.”
Click to access 062026RptFin1.pdf
The above quote, is code, get your act together and work for the common goals of those above you, Lately, there has be a call for school boards and the other arms of education to act together as a cohesive group, working towards the same goals, using standardized approaches to give the image of high accountability, efficiency to elicit trust and confidence at the bottom rung of the centralized model, using school boards as the means to present a false image, hiding the duplicity and hidden agendas of the top.
” Our current hierarchical, bureaucratic structure is becoming ineffective in meeting needs in education today. “The top-down model reflects the hierarchical world of the past, where parents were denied access to educational decision making, and where respect for authority sheltered the system from criticism by parent groups” (House, 1995, p.35). The move from centralization to decentralization, site-based management, or local school governance are results of the shift from top-down governance. As emphasized by House (1995), “The process of schooling is moving from a top-down model delivering professionalized and bureaucratized educational services to passive and apathetic students to a collaborative or bottom-up model, with parent and community involvement in governance, decision making and advocacy at the local school level” (p. 29). A bottom-up structure includes all participants who share in the decision making and form the programs and goals of the system. Transition from a top-down hierarchy to one of decentralized must take into consideration the rights and tradition of the prior system. The shift of authority and responsibility from the school system to parent and community is a change from those distant to those closest to the school. “
http://www.saskschoolboards.ca/old/ResearchAndDevelopment/ResearchReports/ParentPartnership/99-06.htm
The above would be news to the ones who are sitting at the bottom, in Saskatchewan. No such model exists using the bottom-up structure. Instead, it is another pseudo-democracy model, to be used to have conformity and sharing of the same values from the top to the bottom, using the school boards as their enforcers. Duplicity behind the scenes, pulling and tugging at the local values and culture, to elicit change, to reflect the thinking and values held at the top.
“The subsidiarity principle supports reasonable decentralization and argues that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent, and in this context, publicly elected authority. To be clear, ASBA supports the recognition of elected school boards as being the lowest or least centralized competent authority. The principle of subsidiarity, and as offered in our submission, can be defined as the idea that a central
authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is presently best known as a fundamental principle of European Union law and is incorporated in the 10th amendment to the United States constitution. The ASBA believes that this principle can
help frame the interdependent relationship between Alberta Education and the province’s school boards. It is this relationship, the shared governance partnership, which is unique to Alberta Education and school boards in our public education system.”
Click to access school_act_submission.pdf
The above, is all about the Alberta School Boards to retain power and authority, having the right to select goals other than the force goals of the education ministry.
“Effective governance has both procedural and structural components. Ultimately, governance is the exercise of authority, direction and control. A governance structure defines the roles, relationships, behavioural parameters for a board and its staff. The true test of any governance is its effectiveness in promoting and sustaining the board’s achievement standards, in accomplishing goals designed to bring positive results to communities and in demonstrating accountability. School boards are the embodiment of local governance in action.”
Click to access index.php
I rest my case, and confirmed my hypothesis is correct – The school board model is a model of control and compliance within a centralization format that reflects the top down approaches of the goals of the ones who have the authority and power, using change as the means to reflect what is good for the school board and its survival in its current form. Increased centralization leads to pseudo-democracy governance at the bottom of the food chain, for the express purpose to control and direct influence in values at the bottom – the local levels. Duplicity operates behind the scenes.
Nancy,
an admirable statement in your blog:
“It is this relationship, the shared governance partnership which is unique to Alberta education and school boards in our public education system.”
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It remains to be seen, when Max Rafuse (south shore school trustee) motioned to request the Nova Scotia MOE to review the very school board he was elected to – what, or how it was he believed this review would resolve the issues surounding governance, hierarchy, school board rights and abuses, and school reviews. Truely a daunting task.
Perhaps he was ahead of his time, for there seems to be a concerted focus on governance in the province right now. I see that as a good thing.
This was an unusual step to take by a school board trustee. One which in my opinion the chair and vice chair found regretable if centralization was their objectives. Previous school utilization reviews suggest this may have been the principle objective.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/080911/news/index034.php
An interesting opinion from Jerry Pye, former MLA of Dartmouth North.
Restoring confidence to the grass roots democracy system (in this case the south shore) will have to take into account the objectives of the Superintendent and educrats as well as the responsibilities and scope of the elected school board trustees.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/41270-dismissal-last-resort
Steven, the Alberta school model is unique among the provinces, and as in the Alberta education system and its structure. There is a balance, in the power, authority and choice provided for their users. One thing about Alberta’s education system, there is no one solution but many solutions to resolved disputes and problems, that results in share accountability and transparency among the stakeholders and the users of the systems.
Governance is a good thing in any society, but the danger with the current rush to a centralized model is the divvying up the power, authority, and responsibilities between the stakeholders. In my opinion, school trustees are expected to follow the mandates of the board’s staff, as well as the provincial mandates, acts governing school boards. You know, the stuff of how, when, where, and by whom, without the whys’ being explained in any great detail.
“‘Board members are not trained or educated, for the most part, to make the kind of day-to-day decisions that we pay staff salaries to make.”
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/080911/news/index034.php
Typical statement from advocates of centralized control and authority. It is code, to butt out of things you know nothing about. Parents hear it in the form of ” We know what is best for your child”, and its various forms. Ontario and NL are examples of high centralization control in the education system, and where the trustees have been completely neutralized in being representatives for their students and parents. In both provinces, trustees are becoming a very good place to enter politics. A good training ground, but not good for the students or the parents or the individual schools. Last time, I spoke to a school trustee, was back in 2002, and it was a one-way conversation, telling me what I could not do, and besides that is not the job of the trustee in the first place. Imagine, a trustee telling a parent, that it is not their job to question the educrats decisions regarding students. The only thing that I learned, trustees was a waste of my time, and since than I have learned a great deal more, to wonder why I even wasted my time back in 2002, for elected representatives who are there for one reason only, to follow the goals and mandates of the board staff, and the ministry of education.
As I see it, the problem lies with the school board staff and the education department. Both have a natural desire to consolidate power and authority, to where all below them, will complied to the directives of the school board staff and the department of education. Whereas the ministry of education, in the second and top levels of the ministry, are very different beasts, because there is a regular changes of staff and shifting of positions that take place every few years or so. With the changes, mandates shift and change causing conflict with the department of education and the school boards. Centralization models work well, only when everyone follows the mandates and directives, and accept the limitations of power and authority that they processed. Democracy principles are only for show, and any open opposition is squashed or force to follow the protocols that are put in place, to control opposing viewpoints.
Why is Nova Scotia, and even PEI pushing for big box schools, that requires the closing down of many smaller schools? Look at the top levels of the ministry of education, and one will find the answers dealing with dogma, ideology and has nothing to do with the best interests and the education of their children. Why fire the trustee board? To continue the mandate of big box schools, and in turn, easier to manage a smaller number of schools, using the technology of today. Much easier to control values at the bottom levels, and always pushing the bottom levels to follow the goals and mandates of the education system or face the consequences when actions of the bottom level are not in sync with the goals and mandates of the board and ministry.
Alberta is becoming a very interesting model now that it is abandoning testing in elementary schools and establishing a strong educational relationship with gues who? Finland!!!!
Finland?
Why Finland since Canada has the best education system in the world?
You said so, Doug.
They are not abandoning testing, there are abandoning the present format of testing, but it is questionable, since the ministry has not been clear in what forms of new testing will be, and so forth. The only clear notion is the school board association who have made it clear to eliminate testing, but they too have a shopping list, on other things since the presence of the new premier.
The ‘quest’ Doug, seems to be to find the best form of assessment.
Not – my playground is better than your playground.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/boys-at-school-is-it-the-teaching-or-the-tests/article2266450/
The problem impeding the quest seems to be among other things, confidence in local education democracy. Your example of Durham strikes a chord with all Nova Scotians.
Time for a moratorium on closures?
School boards in Canada are engaged in their own internal study of education governance. It was initiated in March of 2011 by the Canadian School Boards Association and is being conducted by a research team from the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Professors Bruce Sheppard and Gerald Galway of Memorial University have assembled a research team to undertake a national study of school board governance. This study is focused on improving the “collective understanding of the attributes of effective school boards across Canada and, in the current context of increasing accountability, furthering understanding of the relationships between school boards and provincial governments.”
Towards these purposes, they are examining three overarching questions:
1. What are the attributes of effective school boards in Canada? Do these attributes vary by province? How can these attributes be replicated in jurisdictions across the country?
2. What is the nature of educational governance in school boards in Canada? Who are the principal actors and what are their governance roles? Does the governance model vary by province?
3. What are the factors and influences that drive policy decision-making in Canadian school boards?
http://www.cdnsba.org/resources/memorial-university-research-project
This study is a follow-up to previous work (Sheppard, Brown & Dibbon, 2009) that revealed that “school boards matter a great deal to the existence of successful public education systems, but only effective school boards have a positive impact on schools and student learning.”
Within this context, the researchers are also examining policy making at the school board level. They claim to be investigating ” incidents where the political and ideological interests of provincial governments have run counter to the perceived mandates of school boards and the governance roles of elected trustees.” They plan to assess cases where provincial ministries “intervened to influence or overturn school board decisions.”
All of this sounds fine, until you get down to the bottom line: “We believe this work has the potential to facilitate effective working relationships between ministries of education and school districts towards a sustained focus on teaching and learning.”
Comment:
School boards always claim to be impacting upon student learning, but the relationship between the elected board’s effectiveness and student performance is tenuous at best. Improving student performance levels is the job of the CEO or Chief Superintendent. Who, I wonder, is pushing the student learning agenda? Isn’t the core issue restoring public accountability through elected trustees? When trustees are deemed expendable, it simply undermines the democratic process which ensures a measure of local accountability.
Who, besides the MOE, decides a school boards effectiveness (except on occasion the electorate) , and how is board policy measured in terms of student performance? Certainly this brings the issue into the realm of the superintendent’s responsibilities also.
In the Canadian School Board Association’s study the following passage states: “Across Canada there have been numerous recent examples of incidents where political and idiological interests of provincial governments have run counter to the perceived mandates of the school board and governance roles of elected trustees. In several notable cases government’s have intervened to influence or overturn school board decisions.”
An effective relationship means accounting for both sides of the students educational interests. Not just the MOE’s perspective and legislative power. The work of a trustee must be very limiting these days in the shadow of the educratic monolith.
Edited for Clarity
I agree whole heartedly, Steven, the Globe and Mail article is an obvious attempt to elicit emotions, rather than discussing the facts and knowledge looking at all sides. A comment on the article says it all, “With declining performance I suspect the education system has lost its way and is more worried about being politically/culturally correct [for the moment] than producing competent, knowledgeable adults.”
Getting back to the thread, the question is: who is pushing the student learning agenda? Elementary the school board staff and the CEO, and boy they can a student’s life miserable, along with their parents, Trustees are mere play things to the staff of the school board, and expect compliance of all trustees to whatever agendas that are at play in the school board’s CEO office.
And they need to do a study on it, as if governance has not been studied and studied over the years. In my opinion based on my experiences, the school board staff want to be the power brokers, to divvy out the shared relationships according to levels, to where the ministry and the department of education within the ministry become mere funding machines, with a set of guidelines, that school boards may or may not have to follow, dealing with students’ learning and the resources. School boards are the ones who are pushing for certain policies, and changes in the power structure to have more control over schools, but put on the clamps on choices and flexibility concerning students and their parents. Parents need to reined in according to them, because too many of them are not dancing their dance, and many if they are are dancing out of step to their steps. Alberta school association would like to see charter schools go the way of the do-do bird, based on equality and funding leaving the public education system. If one started to read the articles dated 20 years ago, the same issues arise over power and authority and who will have the final say over children’s learning.
If parents have an issue with the school board staff, especially with learning issues, one of their favourite tactics is implying final authority – the final say over a child’s education pathway and access to education services. Schools boards want the authority over all aspects of learning, and the autonomy that goes along with it without being held accountable for their own actions.
School trustees have been neutralized a long time ago, and if a trustee acts outside of the goals and aims of the school board’s CEO and staff, it is not long before the political machine is aimed at the trustee, making their personal lives the issue, rather than the issues that the trustee is against or would like to see a new policy become a reality. As I have learned, going about the school board straight to the ministry of education has always brought positive results for my children, going back in the last 20 years or so. Prior to that, I paid no mind to school boards, but it was a different era, where student’s learning appeared to be a priority, along with creating favourable relationships, respecting each stakeholder with dignity and respect. In other words, the school board was eager and willing to discuss issues with groups of parents or the individual parent, in a two-way conversation, and so unlike today where parents are seen as the enemy and a threat to the school board, and parents are told in the many one-way conversations. Rather hilarious to see the actions of school board staff, of any province when parents remain civil, and stay on their topic when talking to them,the same actions takes place no matter what province it is.
I lost track of how many board educrats have hung up on me, because I stayed on topic, no matter how many attempts were made to change the issue to one that was not of my own making. I especially like the phone calls from school board educrats, lecturing me on the evils of drill and practice, and writing my child’s notes for her , so she could actually study when a test came around. I always wanted to hang up on them, but I gritted my teeth, and bit my tongue, always searching in my handy box of research and information for the evidence and support saying they are full of hot air in a nice way. Yes, I got respect from the board staff, but the respect is a result of too many phone calls from the ministry of education, phoning up the board staff questioning their methods and relationships between parents and students. So, they leave me alone, and I leave them alone, until one of their new policies inflicts harm to my youngest child, and more than likely impacting her legal rights under the constitution and the school acts.
“They plan to assess cases where provincial ministries “intervened to influence or overturn school board decisions.”
I had to laugh at the above line, since the studies are being led by Newfoundlanders of the education faculty kind, and NL school boards hate it when the ministry of education intervenes, anyone with political clout, including the cabinet ministries overturning school board decisions. They can’t play the games like they do with parents using intimidation, threats and other tactics to keep parents in line, and working for the common goals of the school board.
Canadian school boards are the most undemocratic institutions, especially when compared to their American counterparts. At least in United States, the trustees are not expendable and are used as the glue between parents and the board staff. Canadian school trustees only have one job, and that is to look after the needs and many agendas of those who work within the school district, and as for building trust in the community, it’s not even in their job description. The trustees have become the top cheerleaders within a school district, and parents on the school councils have become another level of cheerleaders at the lowest levels.
How can duly elected officials be “fired”?
I have to wonder if it’s legal/constitutional.
Of course they can. In Ontario, the three biggest public school boards (Toronto, Hamilton, & Ottawa) were taken over by the province for a time in 2002 while they were being investigated for financial problems, primarily for refusing to balance their budgets and over-spending. The audits were carried out by Al Rosen, one of the most respected forensic accountants in North America. Here are links to the reports–and they are pretty scathing.
Click to access tdsb.pdf
Click to access hwdsb.pdf
Click to access carletondsb.pdf
Recently, the Toronto Catholic board was taken over by the province for over two years because of similar trustee mis-management issues. The school boards fall under the provincial education act therefore can essentially be “fired” by the Minister. See below:
Ont. Education Act. Sec. 230.1 (2)
“If the Minister advises the Lieutenant Governor in Council that he or she is of the opinion that the board has failed to comply with a direction given under subsection (1), the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make any order that the Lieutenant Governor in Council considers necessary or advisable to vest in the Ministry control and charge over the administration of the affairs of the board. 2000, c. 11, s. 7.”
and:
“Control exercisable by Minister
230.5 (1) Where the Lieutenant Governor in Council has made an order under subsection 230.3 (2) in respect of a board, the Minister has control and charge over the board generally with respect to any matter in any way affecting the board’s affairs. 2000, c. 11, s. 7.”
In the case of the SSRSB in Nova Scotia it is not a case of “how”‘ can they be fired. The Nova Scotia Education Act is clear and legislation is defined.
It is however, certainly a situation where the electorate questions “why”‘ were they fired. More so, why were they reviewed and what provoked the review?
In terms of governance though, there has to be a level of frustration with communities which manifests when a trustee accepts being called a hippocrite by local media for trying to keep small schools open.
Putting 40% of a regions schools up for review is enough to make any trustee question the motives of the staff.
This is the central nervous system of this issue.
If the constituionality of “firing” an elected school board has never been tested in court one cannot assume that such actions are constitutional.
It would be interesting to read the results of the Canadian School Board Association study, especially when it comes to the submitted data pertaining to the question: What are the factors and influences that drive policy decision-making in Canadian school boards?
The results to this question should reveal a lot about not only who is pushing the student learning agenda; but also the required multi-year strategic plan school boards work on with staff, how that plan is being implemented through school boards and accompanying school reviews.
Opportunity and accessability to programs may also be a significant factor in the concern for governance in this study. How that information is channeled through school boards needs to be transparent and accurate.
The “firing” of the Halifax Regional School Board in December 2005 did result in a court case launched by some of the dismissed trustees, represented by lawyer Brian Casey. They sought a ruling on the legality of the action under the NS Education Act.
The case was dismissed in a Nova Scotia court and that ended the matter.
I do not know whether the constitutionality of the Minister’s action was put to the test. Perhaps it’s worth investigating further.
Can the Premier be “fired”?
Can the Monister of Education?
I don’t believe they can, constitutionally, as the were elected by the people.
Why would it be different for other elected officials.
It just seems rather peculiar to me.
I would not call the trusteesship of most Ontario boards under Harris “mismanagement”. They refused to make cuts as a principled stand against cutbacks. Cutbacks in education are always wrong.
“Cutbacks in education are always wrong.”
Doug
———————————————————————————————
Not if they benefit the students. Besides, this is about governance.
Obviously you didn’t read the Rosner report. There was gross mismanagement. It’s not about “cutbacks”. If that was the case then the Toronto Catholic Board should have been a piece of cake under McGuinty’s spending spree.
Let’s also not forget the McGuinty clawbacks to spec. ed. that sent school boards scrambling.
Didn’t Calgary dismiss their school board a while back? I’m thinking early 1980s.
“Cutbacks in education are always wrong.”
__________________________________________________
Right. Let’s have a school board with 700 teachers and 1 student.
After all, more is always better.
Calling a single individual a “board” strikes me as absurd, unless that is, that individual enjoys talking to four walls.
However, “the board, Judith Sulivan – Corney, will arrange meetings with School Advisory Councils and Home and School associations in each feeder system in January.”
Sounds to me like the school review bells may be ringing.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/121411/news/index021.php
I learned a legal aspect on public education a while back, concerning the finer points of legality of actions of school boards, and other parts of the system imposing their will upon the public, and being the final authority in all things education.
So forgive me on what I am about to write, it is the readings of many papers talking about the legal aspects of the typical education system in Canada, and I will not be giving out links, because I have yet to come to a deeper understanding of the legal options that the public has at their disposal, when the public education system errs, and the resulting actions causes harm to the students’ education, to which real costs can be imposed for future redress.
The School Acts, is a set of statues creating the entities that delivers education for the provincial ministries of education. In the PEI school act, “Responsibilities of Trustees
39. School trustees have the following responsibilities:
(a) to attend meetings of the school board and exercise the powers
and duties of a trustee in good faith;
(b) to comply with the requirements of the regulations respecting
conflict of interest;
(c) to comply with all other requirements of this Act, the regulations,
the Minister’s orders under subsections 63.2 (5) and (6), the
Minister’s directives and the policies of the school board. 1993,
c.35, s.39; 2010, c.26, s.3.”
Click to access s-02_1.pdf
Which the above is more or less identical to other provincial school acts and statues. As well as the changing definition of the purpose of education, since the 1990s that more or less reflects Ontario’s version.
“Purpose of education
(2) The purpose of education is to provide students with the opportunity to realize their potential and develop into highly skilled, knowledgeable, caring citizens who contribute to their society. 2009, c. 25, s. 1.
Partners in education sector
(3) All partners in the education sector, including the Minister, the Ministry and the boards, have a role to play in enhancing student achievement and well-being, closing gaps in student achievement and maintaining confidence in the province’s publicly funded education systems. 2009, c. 25, s. 1.”
http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90e02_e.htm#BK2
Note the vagueness of the language, and lots of room for various and a multitude of interpretations, The reason is, and what I can determined so far the statues in the school acts becomes very clear, concerning constitutional rights and freedoms, as well as other acts, but not concerning parts of the education acts such as the purpose of education, which is so vague, it becomes meaningless due to many interpretations, The vagueness of the purpose of education and partners in education is left very vague, to meet the minimum legal precedents of various court rulings from the past. At the moment, a public education system only needs to provides the opportunity for an education, but are not legally require to provide a quality education for all their students. The vagueness of the school acts, provides the vehicle to deliver education as the education ministry sees fit, within certain minimum legal requirements, and for the employees including trustees of a public education system, their responsibilities are to follow the regulations, acts, statues and to comply to all ministry’s orders. Sandy, a while back, mentioned that the buck stops at the education ministry’s office, and legally from what I can determine, is solely responsible and accountable for the successes and failures of the education system.
The ministry has the power and legal authority to fire the whole board of trustees, and I can see why the court case was tossed out of court. The same minister can also order a school to provide education services over and above for one student or a group of students, based on the constitutional rights that students with a identified disability has under the charter of rights and freedoms, as well as other acts, children’s rights
The school board has been neutered preventing either the trustees or the board’s staff to stray away from their responsibilities and duties outlined in the school acts and other legislative statues, leaving the students out in the cold, and as a result, the boards are limited to what and how they tend to the individual education needs of the students, and have more control over the collective group of students. Caught in a catch-22, a web of controls to remain within the boundaries of limited legal liability to students, and to stay out of trouble with the ministry of education, who has the power and authority to make trustees and school board’s staff a living hell. No wonder the appearance of collaboration is always up front and centre as the image to the general public.
Is the system fair to boards? No, especially when they are left holding the bag for the failures of the districts, and many of them have the potential to become civil law suits, if the parents are determined like the Moores are in BC. No it is not fair at all,when one looks at the system through the legal lens, where boards are actually prevented from working for the bests of their students and the communities they live in.
Now this has been discussed some what by parents who are interested in the legal options, So if the ministry of education is the top guy, that has all the power and authority to do what he sees fit, the ministry can also be held liable and be sued for damages using the same school acts, Constitution rights pertaining to education rights in language and disabilities, and other related laws and statues. If all of the Nova Scotia boards including the trustees, a civil suit or even at a human rights tribunal got together, share all the information of stats, and other problems resulting in the actions of the ministry of education and let it all hang out for the public to view. I would go even further a class action suit, that would include the school boards as well as the parents, whose children’s education has been hindered by the actions of the ministry of education. And there would be plenty of parents to choose from the past, and the present, to cover all aspects of schooling.
There is a reason why the school acts are vague. Legally speaking, to spread the potential for legal liability around, making the school boards carry the burden of the ministry of education. The ministry of education and the power brokers within the ministry are carrying a rather light load, considering they have the power and authority without having the pesky weight of being accountable for their actions. If they want the power and authority, making the school boards the lackeys of the ministry of education, they also should carry the full weight of accountability on their shoulders, as well as carrying more or less the full weight of liability on the shoulders. One of the reasons why the Moore case is so interesting, and could very well be the one case to shake the foundations of ministries of education across Canada, to reform their governance to where everyone within is working for the best interests at the bottom levels, as well as serving the local needs and not as it is now, where the bottom is serving the needs of those who hold the power and authority, without being accountable for their actions and education policies.
Many remarkable points Nancy.
As I see it the education act (in my province – Nova Scotia) needs to be brought to “life” so to speak. It seems rigid and rooted in arcane protectionism for the MOE. But these traits have allowed the system to flourish at the expense of the students it was intended to nurture and educate within a democratic society and spirit of equal education. Just consider the list of cuts predicted by this band of illuminaries. Notice no concern for cuts to administration.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/42657-mlas-invited-go-back-school
Even during past periods of population and student growth the act was the shield of centralization for the MOE.
Now in these days of declining enrolment and urbanization the act has become a tactical weapon preventing local or grassroots community groups from partnering (a generalization but with some truth to it) through school boards. The SSRSB debacle is a salient example.
There is not a shred of evidence in Nova Scotia, that school boards have expansive opportunities (they are limited by the education act and school review criteria) when it comes to small school relevance and viability.
This needs to change or school boards will continue to be limited in the development of policies intended to better our children’s education; eventually seen as surpuflous by the electorate.
This whole scenario will be very interesting to follow (by those of us not immediately being affected). Will the MOE and the SSRSB staff follow through and expose their agenda for all and sundry to see?
It won’t be hard to tell!
Not to worry. It can still all be in camera.
But Andrew, the hand picked of one trustee, to replace a whole board of elected trustees, makes me think that the camera is excluded as well as the elected trustees. A bit too democratic to fit the current management model, that favours management models of the former USSR.
That said, what would happen if the school board let it all hang out, exposing all agendas, stats, and other knowledge kept hidden from public consumption?
Nothing in the school acts, would hinder it except for abiding by the privacy act in areas of revealing names and schools. Would the MOE go and fire all of the board staff? No, not once the cat was out of the bag. The MOE would have their hands full, dealing with the public asking tough questions, and demanding redress, as well as full forensic audit on all aspects of the education system.
Forensic audits should be done across Canada, concerning the public education systems. There is no doubt in my mind, the ministries of education would be playing the villain, making everyone sing to their tunes, that nobody has the lyrics or music to. Perhaps, parents like myself could get a definitive answers as to why the public education systems in the 21st century finds it very difficult to remediate the everyday garden variety reading disorders, and yet outside of the public education system, it is done every day for a price.
Obviously you didn’t read the Rosner report. There was gross mismanagement. It’s not about “cutbacks”. If that was the case then the Toronto Catholic Board should have been a piece of cake under McGuinty’s spending spree.
I think it was just the Rosen (not Rosner) report on the TDCSB and in their case there was mismanagement regarding the trustees spending on themselves in the main but “overall” spending by schoolboards is already far less than what is needed.
I guess if your real goal is privatization, spending at the school board is always wrong. Some organizations will always be suspect unless they denounce educational privatization and make that position central to their platform. Without that, Corporate Education Reform organizations (Fraser I, CD Howe, AIMS, Frontier, SQE, … ) have a hidden agenda and their positions on all subjects will always be held against the backcloth of the fact that they favour privatization.
Can someone known to favour Ford be credible when they pronounce on Chevy? I don’t think so.
Doug,
So those boards complained there was not enough money to maintain administrations.
Sounds like mismanagement to me.
The trustee expenditure on themselves (just one TDCSB not TDSB, Ottawa or others) was abusive and stupid since they do need to show an example, however the amount of money involved would not have paid one more teacher. Petty but stupidly self indulgent. Catholic board. Yikes, who can you trust?
Organizations that favour privatization of education, (Fraser Inst, CD Howe, AIMS, Frontier, SQE, etc…) commenting on their lack of satisfaction with the public system is like having Blue Cross or Liberty Medical commenting on medicare. Of course they are negative, they want to kill it.
Three school boards as Doretta pointed out. Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton.
Not enough money for maintenance and “administrative” costs. That is not principled – it is just plain mismanagement.
Protecting the classrooms from cuts and communities from losing schools (like the Durham example); that’s principled.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/education/school_boards.html
Steven – Read the links Doretta provided. They tell the whole mismanagement story. Not only that, the top-ups and bailouts the TDSB enjoyed didn’t help….so contrary to Doug’s “more money” mantra. Um…nope. It’s not always about the money.
Wrong Steven there simply was not enough money overall. They scrimped on maintenance and other things to save the classroom for many years. They put the kids first. I don’t know when, I think we are getting close, we are going to understand that there is a solution to educational underfunding. The solution is RAISE TAXES ON HIGH INCOMES AND CORPORATIONS. If we don’t get this we will just all suffer needlessly.
How much more is needed?
High incomes are already highly taxed.
What tax rates are needed and how is it to be done while remaining competetive globally?
A passage from the Rosen report, Executive summary: “It would logically follow from their comments that the trustees should have been voting to spend a large portion of available dollars on classroom actvities. Nevertheless, we have serious concerns that a disproportionate share of available funding dollars have been, and are being, diverted away from the classroom.”
sounds like a mismanagement issue to me Steven.
Doug,
It depends on the objectives of the DOE and budget priorities – not an overall money tree. Be that as it may, overall expenditures in any field of public responsibility has a ceiling, it is called the taxpayer. When it reaches the school board level it seems to be compromised. But by who?
Here in Nova Scotia, if the DOE had a better plan prioritizing and ensuring maintenance of existing schools, then impact assessments would not reveal the endless decline of rural schools, when in fact the DOE’s objective is more bigger and newer schools with even greater maintenance cost projections for the taxpayer.
Many community schools are deliberately unmaintained in order to encourage cabinet to approve of a centralized replacement. This is called the “wish list”. The south shore in Nova Scotia has numerous examples.
With the demolition of an old school, and the 30 million tab for the new “state of the art” school estimated to last for 40 years, it would be interesting to compare what the savings are with respect to a school was that was preserved, maintained, and upgraded in the first place.
In 40 years, maintaining the existing school would cost considerably less than new capital expenditures which often double or in some cases triple in cost to the taxpayer (factoring in contractor estimates and cost estimate escape clauses) while enrollment continues to decline.
Doug defending the best interests of the unionists as well as maintaining the current status-quo, that develops the conditions for unions to flourish and maintain power and influence over the other stakeholders and having the ability to deflect blame to the other stakeholders. Teachers’ unions never do have the best interests of the students they serve, because students best interests run counter to the best interests of the unions, and impact the power and influence of the dogma and ideology of the unions.
In the Rosen report for Toronto, “Nevertheless, we have serious concerns that a disproportionate share of available funding dollars have been, and are being, diverted away from the classrooms.”
Hamilton report, “During our investigation, we have been able to identify areas where HWDSB can increase its efficiencies, streamline its operations, achieve efficiencies, focus spending in the classroom and gain more value from
its overhead investments.”
Ottawa report, “Based on the evidence that we have seen, we are not convinced that the majority of the Trustees of the OCDSB, no matter how dedicated each may be, have voted decisively in the past two or more years to carry out attainable savings. The role of a Trustee of a School Board should involve balancing the interests of citizens of Ontario with the needs of students and parents in their school district.”
The Ministry of education and it would not matter one wit what the political stripe of the government was, would have no choice but to take the actions that the ministry of education did, to maintain the governance model, the power division, and put a stop to the deliberate attempts of bypassing the School Acts, the statues and other education legislative regulations. The boards were breaking the laws, in order to serve their own best interests in the political sphere, to maintain their power and influence over all things in education. Increasing centralization, does have a tendency to increase negative outcomes of the students that are serve, when the students become the tools and weapons to promote the hidden agendas and special interests within the arms of the education system.
That said, the links provided by Steven really reflects the the tug of wars between the arms of the public education system, fighting to maintain their power and influence to serve the best interests and hidden agendas, and where students, parents and the taxpayer are devoid of power,limited options and are forced to dance the many dances within the arms of the system, to sort out the many different dogma of themes centered around the almighty dollar, that supposedly prevents a well-rounded education for the individual student.
“RCMP riot squads used tear gas to break up the protests.”
“The Klein government also set up parental school councils that would make the day-to-day decisions, but had little power.”
“The B.C. government still holds the purse strings, though, and has recently frozen funding for education for the next three years. The government also passed a law that declared teachers an “essential service,” removing their right to strike. ”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/education/school_boards.html
“Allen and the others complained about a $36-million Education Department funding cut last year, the loss of 210 teaching jobs and another 211 education-related jobs, and the threat of more cuts to come.”
“We have a more inclusive system that requires more supports.”
“I don’t think a child’s education can wait a year or two for the deficit to turn around,” Allen said. “Every year is important in that child’s life.”
The educators, who have been led to believe the cuts will continue this year, wanted to publicize their concerns partially in the hope that citizens complain to their local MLAs.”
“Fleury said additional education cuts will be felt among those students the most.
“There’s going to have to be some very, very hard decisions made in respect to the classroom supports that are in place for those students that need additional help.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/42657-mlas-invited-go-back-school
If the school boards and unions were interested in having more autonomy at the bottom levels, they would have gone to war using the data collected over the years, on the outcomes of the individual students, and the collective whole. Sure, the school boards and union would get a lot of flack at first, but eventually the ministry of education would face the full wrath of parents, the lower levels of the education system and the taxpayers demanding change, that would improve the outcomes of all students. And put an end using students as the tools to promote self-serving interests of the various parts of the education system. The real reality that Fleury should state, SE children are put on waiting lists, and do wait for services until the system sees fit to provide the service, and it does not not matter how much money is poured into the system, because it is not designed to served the needs of the students and their education needs.
Yes Nancy the reports don’t lie. Many of us were there when all this shook down. There was much nastiness being filtered down to the children as well.
Too much to write about here.
Sad to report, that a set of parents decided to have the school, the school board and the ministry to account for their actions, and non-actions regarding their child to address his learning difficulties, and demanding a much more challenging curriculum than what was provided.
They gave notice, that they are withdrawing their child from the school, until the board and the school, along with them can arrived at a reasonable solution that all can live with. Notice was sent to all, including the ministry.
The parents wanted one to one instruction, in math and language arts, to get the boy up to grade level, that in their opinion the school and the board was at fault, for providing work a couple of grade levels below, in response to his attention deficit disorder. The boy soon became a behavioural problem, as well as dealing with learning problems that emerge doing dumb-down work. Not to mention the psychological problems that developed, was the third problem.
The ending of the story, another set of parents had no choice, but to joined the home schooler community, since the school and the board refuse to remediate to get the boy up to grade level. Once the parents went public, the parents were treated to a visit of a social worker and the police holding a report of child neglect. The silver lining, the boy’s behavioural and well being a dramatic improvement since home schooling began, and a child who is rapidly learning and ready to learn.
I only know too well the nastiness that is filtered down to the children, when parents take a stand on their children’s education that rests on their best interests, and not someone else’s definition of best interests. The favourite tactic employed, telling my child, I didn’t know anything or I don’t know what I was doing. Make the parent the bad guy.
Andrew Gilmour
How much more is needed?
High incomes are already highly taxed.
What tax rates are needed and how is it to be done while remaining competetive globally?
Rozanski was asked to answer this in Ontario.He said “Harris removed about $2 billion and that ought to be put back. I would say 3-4 billion more in Ontario to bring us to about $25-26 billion would do.
There is some basic Economics 101 that people miss with education spending. The first is that it is not a cost item it is an investment like R&D only better because it is pretty much guaranteed to increase productivity and efficiency and investment in the educated community. It is also guaranteed to reduce social costs so less will need to be spent on cops courts jails prisons welfare, EI, social housing etc etc. The ombination of these two is powerful and generates far more money than the cost of the education investment. Modern corporations look to an educated workforce to locate high tech high value added factories. The silicon valley future is based on the places that invest the most in education. China and India are investing every spare RMB and Ruppie they have in education and eating our lunch. The ONLY way to compete in the future is MASSIVE educational expenditure.
We are a much lower taxed jurisdiction in Ontario than every border state. Our PM wants to spend billions on totally unnecessary prisons and jet fighters. we need to tax more but we also need to shift revenues from unproductive expenditure to education.
Spending on education INCREASES our ability to compete in the global market it does not decrease it.
If Canada wants to be a rich nation with close to full employment in good jobs the secret is MASSIVE educational efforts.
Typical non-answer
Rozanski also said that the way the formula was set out to follow the student was sound. There were many positives among the Rozanski report that Doug conveniently cherry-picks out.
They scrimped on maintenance and other things to save the classroom for many years. They put the kids first.
Horsefeathers, in TDSB (according to the late lamented variance reports),the board stripped money from the classroom (EAs, textbooks, school supplies, libraries, technology, Special Education…..) in order to spend six times what they were allocated for “central administration.”
After all, those $300 000 Superintendents of Useless Projects have to be paid for somehow;-)
I don’t call that “putting the kids first.” Putting the bureaucrats first is more like it. We need more boots on the ground, not at 5050 Yonge, and more resources in the classroom, not designer office furniture for paper pushers.
Spot on.
And that isn’t unique to the TDSB.
Those Variance Reports told the whole sad story about how boards stripped money from classrooms. Not just the TDSB either. It happen provincially.
Thank-you TDSB for reminding me that it was the Harris gov’t that allowed the public to see those Variance reports and the breakdown per student per board.
The Variance Reports were part of an extensive school board profile. Don’t bother looking for those reports now though….McGuinty nixed them. Can’t have classroom teachers and parents knowing how boards messed with students now can we?
Doug, TDSB said it best, “I don’t call that “putting the kids first.” Putting the bureaucrats first is more like it. We need more boots on the ground, not at 5050 Yonge, and more resources in the classroom, not designer office furniture for paper pushers.”
As for the comment made by Doug, in the last post – “The combination of these two is powerful and generates far more money than the cost of the education investment. Modern corporations look to an educated workforce to locate high tech high value added factories. The silicon valley future is based on the places that invest the most in education. China and India are investing every spare RMB and Ruppie they have in education and eating our lunch. The ONLY way to compete in the future is MASSIVE educational expenditure. ”
Hard to complete with India and China, when their economic systems depending on cheap labour, as well as the use of child labour starting around the age of 12 or 13 years old. In today’s news, an African nation, makes use of child labour as young as 6 years old. Another feature of the China and India system, is that, 60 percent of the population has the equivalent of a grade 6 to grade 8 education, and a small percentage has only a primary education. In both countries, to attend high school, small tuition fees must be pay, as well as fees for the exams, and other testing material.
Meanwhile on the home front, the western part of Canada, the average working citizens would like to see the refining of the oil and products of oil done in Canada, and than exported out to countries. The eastern part of Canada,, ordinary working citizens would like to processed and added-value of fish take place in Canada, and not in places like China. Not going to happen in both cases, because it is more profitable for the big guys to send out the raw resources, because of the cheap labour according to today’s news reports.. And neither will Doug’s fantasy of a silicon valley future for Canada, based on China and India, models of the education system. that in reality is all about cheap labour based on the lowest cost for the least amount of education according to class status,
Yeah, we need more boots on the ground on the ground, not only in our schools, but as well more boots on the ground producing and manufacturing, to create the jobs, to sustain the living standard and support the public institutions to correct the inequalities, as well as the worrisome public liability of public sector pensions. Canada can do without the paper pushers and dreamers of Utopian societies, who eschews reality and replaces it by cherry picking facts, and than expect it to be successful, but if not, it can always be blame on the average citizen, and their inadequacies. Did I sum it up correctly Doug?
The “You can never spend enough on education” thing has been dealt with. Until and unless you know the specific areas the money will be allocated to there’s no way of determining what, if any, additional value it provides. Contrary to what some folks assert the “a dollar is a dollar is a dollar” when spent on “education” is simply not true. Some areas of spending generate a far higher return than others. As always the devil is in the details. Then there’s the issue of what other areas of society you’ll be shortchanging in order to pour money into what we’re already told is already one of the best systems in the world. That suggests that we’re already funding the system at a perfectly adequate level and, as the Rosen audits showed, the issue is more one of misallocation.
Sure John, MASSIVE expenditures should go to the relentless reduction of class sizes, extending the ELP down to 2 year olds, professional development, reduction and eventual elimination of post secondary tuition, social workers, educational assistants, green retrofits of buildings, neglected building maintenance, new technology, and of course all of this in a context where wages meet at least the inflation rate.
Are you aware that Finland not only requires a masters degree but pay the MA students a first year teachers wage to study for the masters. That is a comittment. That is what being serious about education looks like.
To Nancy, Of course India and China are using cheap labour they are also creating the world’s greatest number of PhDs. China is investing the world’s highest % of GDP in education. The really smart nations like Switzerland and Finland see that the only way to compete for advanced nations in the future is high value added products and services, pharma, high tech, financial services, etc. This however requires MASSIVE increases in educational expenditure or Canada will be left in the dust as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
How has highly educated Wall Street been doing… the Wall Street banksters who have sent the world’s economy into a tailspin?
Andrew Gilmour
How has highly educated Wall Street been doing… the Wall Street banksters who have sent the world’s economy into a tailspin?
So you advocate LOW education for national development? Not really a clever strategy. It all comes down to this in the future of Canada and other nations in the world.
The country that spends the most and the most wisely on education wins.
Still avoiding the questions and putting words in other peoples’ mouths?
Hardly a way to be taken seriously, Doug.
To add a bit more to Andrew’s comments, Doug likes to leave out all facts that do not meshed in his glorious world of a mix bag of socialism, and other bits and pieces , to create a vision of an abstract world devoid of any realities that threatens the vision.
Part of his vision, is the elimination of the trustees, and to be replaced by hand-picked appointees, handsomely paid to become the executors of policies no matter how useless the policies are, by the board staff of many paper shufflers and keepers of paper clips.
Who gains from suspending local democracy? The school board staff, in the same way as the Chinese educrats and Indian educrats gain, by restricting higher education levels according to social/economic status. Perhaps parents at the SSRSB district can turned the tables, by making it public the personal stories of parents dealing with school board staff. For the trustees to be let go on the weakest, and I might add pathetic excuse of talking about issues at their private residences, a behavior that is a very social thing to do concerning human behaviour, I am sure some of the parents have stories about the actions of school board staff, that may indeed border on job reviews to see if they will keep their jobs.
There is a lot of dirt hidden from the public when it comes to the activities and actions of the school board staff, and take full advantage of their power and position to control the actions of parents, students to force parents to accept their decisions, or go back to the rock that they climb under from. Of course in China and India, the educrats don’t have to deal with the parents, the culture takes care of that, keeping social mobility to low levels, allowing the educrats the freedom to enforce their edicts, on a compliant population who do not have options, other than what the state is willing to grant.
So Doug, the lover of socialism, the kind that Marx opines in the Enlightened Age – the visions of a compliant populace where the state makes the orders, the edicts and in this case all things education, because they are the only ones that know what is best for the citizens, and not the citizens themselves.
But how does that work out with a trustee of one? Very well under the Marx ideology, since Marxist ideology and as well as socialism considered democracy a necessary evil, that must be control at all possibles costs.
It would be interesting for the general public to take note of the pristine religious maintenance of the South Shore Regional School Board administration offices in Bridgewater; then view the negligence of proper maintenance of numerous schools throughout the region in communities described by the educrat- in -chief Judith Sullivan-Corney as “feeder schools”.
At Centre Consolidated, one of the many schools closed to “feed” the new Bluenose Academy monolith, one can easily see the window rot from the roadside. This school will soon be procaimed the responsibility of the municipality which will have no recourse but to then proclaim it underutilized just as the inhouse consultants did during the utilization review. It will most likely be demolished.
Interesting term “feeder schools”. Communities for consumption.
Forensic reports often are clinical in declaring school board inefficencies in delaying school closures; as in the way they may hinder savings prescribed by staff recommendations.
Staff has no interest or responsibility in taking into account the community that buit the school in the first place (ie Lunenburg Academy) and the costs related to the taxpayer upon the transfer of the building back into the community. These are not considered inefficiencies and rarely commented on by auditors as in the Rosen report. They have restrictive parameters to work with.
It is simply called pass the buck.
What a way to divest ourselves of our social capital, not to mention our social conscience. Is this a trustee’s role in the governance of the public school system? To pass the buck?
Process over substance.
http://www.digbycourier.ca/News/2011-12-07/article-2827753/Pitches-made-to-save-Weymouth-school/1?mid=553180
Part of his vision, is the elimination of the trustees, and to be replaced by hand-picked appointees, handsomely paid to become the executors of policies no matter how useless the policies are, by the board staff of many paper shufflers and keepers of paper clips.
Where do you get these lies Nancy and that is what they are lies. I was a trustee and have fought to keep trustees every time it was an issue. You need to stop telling lies.
We need to start calling you Nancy McCarthy granddaughter of Joe McCarthy. Red baiting is a long and very dishonoured distortion. It led America to black lists of movie producers writers, actors singers until Kirk Douglas had the courage to break the blacklist by making Spartacus.
The motivation behind people who decide they want to become trustees, is something that should be discussed. What was your motivation Doug, besides the obvious crossing swords with the Harris government, and basing it on your actions once you became a trustee.
That said, the trustees are in control of a significant amount of public dollars, and yet judging from the newspapers accounts, some of the trustees have a disregard to spend wisely, with what dollars they do have, as well as not having the responsibility to be held accountable to the public, to explain in full details why they made decisions.
Such questions as this – “Why is it that both Port Maitland Consolidated School and Carleton Consolidated have had over $3 million each spent on renovations in recent years? One of the schools has an enrolment of 155, the other has an enrolment of 92. Both have predicted declining enrolment and yet we are forced to justify the existence of our school, even though its predicted enrolments are steady at 250?”
http://www.digbycourier.ca/News/2011-12-07/article-2827753/Pitches-made-to-save-Weymouth-school/1?mid=553180
And many more across the country, where citizens are being hog-tied to every which way, to prevent them and limit their freedoms and rights to participate and have their say. It is obvious that school boards are not living up to the spirit of their mission statements, when the school closing process and reviews are obvious for show, where the decisions have been made ahead of time what schools will close. No wonder parents and other groups, only have a 5 minute window to state their case, and no discussions takes place on questions posed. This kind of window dressing, and let us all pretend parents and students are partners pretense, takes place right throughout the education system at the various levels. IEP meetings, where parents are under the impression that they have a say, and comes prepared to state their side of things, do not get a chance to have their say in meaningful ways. The meeting is already hijacked by the prepared IEP made in advance without the input of the parent, awaiting the signature of the parent.
Yes, there is costs that are downloaded unto others, when decisions are being made in advance, without the input of citizens, and methods to prevent the same citizens from having their say, and to reach a mutual consensus.
It should not surprise me, the same type of actions are seen in the countries where the governments have a stronger present of public services, to where decisions, the final say is made by some bureaucrat, In part, Europe is in a big mess, because the democratic processes slowly became window dressing for the citizens, and as a result the governments were no longer providing the needs of their citizens, but other needs that did not exactly meet the needs of their citizens.
It is why we have parents holding teachers hostage, and in another part of the world using their feet to the private school, and in another part of the world, suing the school and district. Or in BC, a newly elected trustee refusing to take the oath, and not another election must be held, at a cost of $100,000 that will be taken away from the students. If the public education system, was actually a business, they would have had a sign a long time ago, stating going out of business. The public pays dearly for the actions of the public education system, because they are not held to account at the bottom level.
I see, your sharpening your skills on name calling, and how about sharpening your skills on the issues, especially the ideological flaws and what is being pushed unto the public as causing harm to the social fabric of society. Check out the WISE site Doug, most of the people signing up have been teachers in the pass few days, and are very critical of the public education system and the present math curriculum and instruction. And rather reassuring, that I am not an isolate case when it comes to the long nights of reteaching math in the early days. The education system should start paying parents for their time and expertise when they are force to undertake the re-teaching role at home and doing the things that really should be taught at school, but are absent from the schools.
I was trustee before Harris. Even long before Peterson and Rae.
I feel confident that the educratocracy has developed and employed the means through governance audits and in other cases financial audits of school boards, a way to deploy a centralist structure politically and geo-socially via the school boards -the handmaidens of education.
Useful devices when governance does not always go smoothly.
When there is a change in a provincial government there is also a new transition of funding from the previous regime to the new funding system defined by a fresh government. This transition can be exasperated when school closures are impeded by school boards.
But what if the school board does not use the budget for the intended purpose set out by the MOE?
Economy and efficiency become the lightning rods for measurement. When, in the staffs opinion, the school board continues to allocate funding to under- utilized schools and transportation programs, suspicion develops and the reasons must be accountable to the gods appointed (not elected).
Soon there is a verdict via the media that the means are not justifiable to the humble taxpayer and there is then the predictable human outcry of conflict of interest and requisite sanctions for not severing a communities lifeline in the name of utilization.
The reprobate schoolboard is then issued pink slips owing to a self inflicted crisis based on collusion with their constituents to preserve a democratic approach to education and community sustainability.
Well then, control, management, and administration are to be handed over to the Ministry (as if they didn’t have control) and the process is carried out by the educrat -in-chief with no elected intervention to inform the masses.
Dr. Bennett is correct. Consensus achieved.
Consensus achieve, without the pesky peanut gallery looking over the shoulder of one appointee.
Doug, if you were a trustee – did the actions of the previous boards set the conditions for the future take over of the Toronto Board by the ministry of education? Another thing that trustees, and for that matter deciding on the hear and now, without ever looking forward into the future, to discussed future impacts. I bet no one thought of the future consequences, back in the 1980s to delay maintenance, and the delaying became the the standard solution each and every year. Isn’t Toronto dealing with a hefty tab on roof repairs, to where they had to hook up with a green energy company, in order to get a new roof for a school? I wonder what will be the future costs, considering the Europeans can’t wait to get to Ontario, to overturned the green energy set-up under free trade. and that is if the European and Canada trade agreement is finally signed?
Trustees cannot make wise policy decisions when fed misinformation by the educrats.
What history is there with past provincial governments in Nova Scotia, of internal governance audits ( that is the DOE staff, not school boards) – or administration reviews with respect to education accountability related to the “school utilization reviews” or budget objectives?
If this is a case of infailability the public is not buying it.
Every pol in NS stands for the status quo.
But you don’t.
And I do not believe the SSRSB did either.
I’m thinking more along the lines of provincial party politicians.
Probably true. Here is another example of tilting in favour of the DOE.
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/101211/news/index033.php
There is a power struggle between trustees and bureaucrats at every board even amongst people with surface friendly relationships about who calls the shots. Directors see trustees as “community advisors” but trustees see themselves as “the boss and final authority”. Municipal government, city and school board are governments but they are not constitutionally protected as are provinces with regard to the fedeal government.
Cities and boards are “creatures of the province” allowed to carry on unless they anger the province. In every power struggle the province has the upper hand because they can change the rules any time they want. When trustees had independant access to the tax base in other words, they could raise property taxes on business and houses, they had real power. This was taken away because many of their decisions run counter to provincial decisions.
I support almost total independance for school boards. I do support the ability of the provinces to “ban the strap” province wide, insist that these credits lead to a HS diploma etc but they micromanage curriculum and pedagogy today to a point where one does wonder why have boards. Even with union negotiations today, since the province took all financial control, the teachers really bargain first with the province re the size of the annual grant and later with the boards over the raise benefits conditions etc.
This can only end in province wide bargaining or an return of finance to the boards. I think you know which is more likely.
Steven’s link clearly shows the school boards and ministries working hand in hand to limit power and authority, controlling the actions of the school trustees, parents and the community.
“The process gives the fully informed, professional staff at school boards 166 per cent more time to prepare the IARs[Impact Assessment Reports], while shortening the time available for the part-time, volunteer and novice school study committee 33 per cent less time to respond.”
“Moreover, the department refused to implement the recommendation to support school study committees through provision of knowledgeable, third party facilitator [or] consultants to assist in preparing their responses to the school boards’ IARs.”
And than the reasons, to support the stance of the education ministry board, that maintains and increases the image of the school board staff being top dog, but as well as imprinting to the public, the image that the part-time, volunteer school study committees, need to be control since they may have motives, that ultimately work against the school boards and the ministry of education. The well-organized boards and ministry, access to all information, and much of it kept out of the eye of the public, as well as some serious access to legal, accountant, and other such professional knowledge, vs the loosely connected network of parents and other interested citizens, with their various skills, abilities, knowledge, experiences.
The controls are put on the loosely connected network of parents and other interested citizens for good reasons. The loosely connected network of parents and other interested citizens, are not bound by conventions and protocol, and processes, as well as citizens coming together can become a powerhouse combining the individual skills, abilities and knowledge to do serious damage to the well-organized boards. with all their resources. School board staff need more time, to craft and anticipate their responses, modified pre-determined goals and to counteract any negative images and opposing responses from the volunteer school study committees.
As far as I can determine, is that the public education system and its structure are design based on the premise that parents, students and the communities need guidance, control, because they act first on their own best interests, and not necessarily for what is good for the education system. The danger is when they form a loosely connected network, combining their skills, abilities, and knowledge that may be far superior to school boards of vast resources.
I think as the years roll by, trustees will go the way of the do-do bird, to be replaced by elected and appointees, all working under the umbrella of the school board staff and ministry, and parents and other citizens will officially become enemy number one, through the regulations, thou shall rules, and always keeping with the minimum requirements within legal parameters. I have noted, in Europe and United States, within the education systems, charters, vouchers, private tutors and other options, as well as actions of parents working for the best interests of their children, increases when boards, ministries, and other parts of the education systems, increases controls and policies that maintains their power and authority. Furthermore, public institutions, including education the freer the public service is in terms of being free of fees imposed on the users, the controls and authority of having final say over the users, increases.
Unions are caught between the two places, and more than likely, as they have done in the past, side with the school board staff and ministry to prevent any power being delegated to parents, except within the legal parameters. In this case, they are standing by the sidelines watching, because it doesn’t matter if their is only one trustee or 12 trustees, appointed or elected, or whether they all came from Mars. Funny, how unions are always preaching about democracy and how the unions claims democracy principles are the foundation to a civil society, than stand by the sidelines watching their cohorts dismantled a board of trustees. One would think they would be front and center, but the union brass knows trustees are a pain in their butt and their best interests.
It’s all about who gets the money. The lowest on the totem pole are the students and they aren’t old enough to vote so they can pound sand.
So true Andrew.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/43002-students-and-learning-top-priorities
Here is a perspective to Wolfville Community members; Ramona Jennex’s region – to the SAC chair:
“To facillitate the transition to the new capital planning process, which contains many improvements that school boards have been advocating for,
the Department has requested that each school board provide updated school construction and renovation priorities.
The Board will review all previously submitted and approved projects to ‘confirm’ and update the need for and scope of each project for inclusion in the overall capital plan for future years.
It is not known at this time if this resubmission will have any impact on the origiially approved timelines.”
Furthermore as humble parents who may question transparency, the following assertion:
“The board is committed to an open and transparent process for its capital planning and will insure that all affected school communities are kept apprised throughout the process.”
Margo Tait, Superintendent of Schools
Once again, while the superintendent commits to keeping the SAC informed, “there does not appear to be any opportunity for school communities to provide input as part of the review process.”
Opinion: previous patterns have revealed that when maintainance is deferred to certain schools, a centralized replacement may be planned by the ministry of centralization.
The enrolment stability or increases to school population are not always factors in reviewing schools for future renovations. In fact, they are often avoided if school closures are being determined.
Neglecting a school’s physical plant can be another contributor to ensuring its future closure.
What’s the connection between dismissing elected school boards and the relentless process of shutting down small community schools? It’s becoming the “elephant in the room” around the Board Table in many school boards.
School accommodation reviews are insidious exercises because the rules of engagement are set by “facilities planners” with a narrow range of vision bent upon lowering overhead costs. Most school board facilities superintendents still rely upon the Edgar Morphet formula (i.e. facilities replacement is of highest priority, and the quality of education is only a complication).
Today’s Commentary, co-written by Malkin Dare, attempts to put a new strategy on the agenda — one that focuses on community renewal and aims to disrupt the relentless school consolidation process:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/43807-don%E2%80%99t-shutter-small-schools-open-them-community
The South Shore Board governance crisis may yet prove to be decisive, if it exposes the real priorities of the system planners and awakens citizens to the threat posed to local education democracy.
School accommodation reviews are insidious exercises because the rules of engagement are set by “facilities planners” with a narrow range of vision bent upon lowering overhead costs.
I have yet to see an impartial and comprehensive in situ study that proves that bigger is cheaper.
I have seen such studies that readily prove that smaller is not necessarily more expensive.
I support many aspects of the Chronicle Herald article (written by Malkin Dare and Paul Bennett) . The best litmus test of the closure of a small school is when a majority of parents want it closed by a show of hands or by a secret ballot if necessary after a local debate re the pros and cons. The best use of the empty space is child care and adult education followed by public libraries, public health clinics, meeting space, community centre activities and so forth. TDSB is dotted with alternative schools who have a “principal of record” usually in the closest school who looks after those things that only a principal can do. As for secretarial or caretaking, this can be scaled back at an appropriate level to match the school enrollment. Lots of people in rural areas love part time jobs in fact many have 4 of them.
On the other hand, we need to look at the history of the rural school and the rural school board that has been growing ever since it was the little red school house and the board was 4 local farmers. Consolidation after consolidation marks our history township> county> double county and so forth. We are suffering rural depopulation as farms get bigger and resource companies and farmers use more technology.
Yes new technologies in education can also help but they are fraught with problems and only really an embryo of their future now.
When you cutback education funding overall, the animals around the waterhole look at each other differently. As usual my answer is raise the D*#N taxes and pump more money into education. Sometimes the very people who want their school saved are opposed to overall tax increases. The collar and cuffs need to match. Otherwise the word hypocrite falls easily off the tongue.
“The best litmus test of a small school is when a majority of parents want it closed by a show of hands or a secret ballot…”
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If it were only that simple. In Lunenburg the mayor and council motioned and voted to recommend closure even before the consultants impact assessment report was finalized and delivered to the local SAC for assessment.
When asked in the last municipal campain to put the closure of Lunenburg’s schools to a survey of the parents and citizens of Luneburg, all candidates said yes but one.
After the election, the survey was given a council burial.
Not a sterling example of local democracy Doug.
What the heck?
Not too long ago you were expounding about sending the kids to huge boarding schools.
Now you want to keep the smaller schools open if possible.
Do you have any opinions at all or does it depend on which way the wind is blowing?
Ah yes.
It’s like pumping taxpayer dollars into unsustainable industries in order to save a few jobs.
Frequently, the jobs “saved” cost more than any income generated as an offset.
Before spending more one needs to determine whether those dollars are well spent.
Oh I don’t know, spending the money to keep small rural schools open. I assume that money grows on trees.
Same in Ontario especially in the rural areas. Please lower the taxes but we would like our school kept open and our hospital kept open, and could you widen the highway to our town and could we have a CATscanner and an MRI and could you spend some money to help a plant locate here and we don’t want to travel for cancer treatment, and and and and could you cut the taxes please? LOL, ya right.
“I assume that money grows on trees.”
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I think you know full well that small schools can be efficacious, affordable and sustainable.
For the last twenty years or so there is no evidence consolidation and centralization (big box) have saved our system any money.
It’s tough to counter the “more money, more money” mantra of those who have spent unwisely. To abandon that nonsense would mean admitting that they were wrong.
Can’t have that.
Instead, we get perpetual red herrings.
What they constantly get wrong is that we have no objections to more money as long as it is spent wisely and effectively – that is, to provide our citizens with a well rounded education.
It is the bussing that kills the budget, not the day to day delivery of the program.
I worked with teachers in norther Ontario, Smooth Rock Falls before they closed the school and sent the kids to Timmins. I asked the teacher what they taught.
#1 English, French, history geography, Phys Ed, guidance, special ed, …
#2 Math, science, economics, 9/10 English, computers,
I said, you know in Toronto every one of those subjects has a specialist and you need a specialist certificate to teach it beyond grade 10? If people are satisfied with that I guess they keep it open as long as possible.
They said they understood that but the government waves that for remote communities.
Eventually they shut the pulp mill that was the reason SRF existed. Everyones housing value instantly became $0.
,
BS Doug. It is the quality and downgrading of teachers qualifications over the years, to where an English teacher is teaching math in grade 10, because her minor was in math. As for the highly specialized teachers, not enough of them are being trained in the education faculties, as a results shortages and than comes the hiring of teachers teaching subjects that they only minored in.
As well as the image that the unions are constantly repeating, that all teachers are highly qualified to teach, and all are equal in their qualifications because they have pedagogical training. Find and dandy Doug, but what the teachers do not have is the knowledge base to teach the knowledge. In my rural area, we do have the specialist teachers in the local high school, and in the province there is no problem for rural areas to attract the specialist teachers, and the problem is not enough of them in the system, causing the shortages.
No wonder other people who do not live in Toronto, hate Toronto for a good reason. Closed down the pulp mill, leads to Toronto residences and government paying higher prices and higher tax expenditures. As for houses going down to zero, which is as false, you really ought to talk to some government experts that only know too well the difficulties that governments are dealing with. Doug’s attitude better change, or one day he will wake up one day, finding the well dry, when and if he every needs to access any government services in the city of Toronto. It might not be there, just like contacting the school trustee representative in the SSRSB, who have been told to go home.
I have a problem with this “specialized teacher” stuff.
How is it that a teacher – a university graduate – cannot master all the course content that the students in elementary and high school are expected to master?
To Andrew, You don’t know what you are talking about. It is hardly “the mastery” of the content that matters however it is the ability to make it come alive, to extend it to embelish it. You want the English major teaching Calculus or Functions and Relations? Try to be serious.
To Nancy, The fact that you know almost nothing about what you are talking about doesn’t seem to slow you down. Whenever you hit an area you don’t know much about you just speculated with populist cliches and shop worn rhetoric.
To both of you. listen carefully. ONLY TEACHERS KNOW HOW TO TEACH, KNOW WHAT IS REQUIRED TO TEACH, KNOW WHAT AND HOW TO PUT IT TOGETHER.. WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW, DON’T GUESS.
It is more insulting than you seem to understand when NON-TEACHERS tell teachers how to do their jobs.
I think the discussion has deteriorated to the point where, if our commentators were a school board, the Minister of Education would step in, dismiss them and appoint one person to put all view points forward.
The issue may be the amount of money needed to properly fund education is not being made available. To raise that money taxes have to go up, preferably on those in our society who can afford to pay them and who have been getting too many breaks for too long.
That does not mean we should throw good money after bad. There needs to be accountability and measuring of outcomes to decide where the money should go in the system. There appears not to be a real accountability in the system and perhaps that is because we, as a society have not discussed and decided on what the goals are.
Are we interested in training students so they can compete in the modern world of high tech and joblessness or do we want to educate our children so they become good citizens whatever it is they do for a living, so that they become interested in their community and in learning until they die? ( Disclosure: I opt for the latter.)
We can off course choose to leave that direction to the educrats and, it seems up to now we have done just that by default.
We, as a society, also need to decide how we want to reach those goals. With respect to education, one aspect of the “how” is the building in which education (or training) takes place. There have been some suggestions in previous commentaries that seem quite viable to me. I do not believe students need all the bells and whistles in order to get a great “education”.
I think we need to explore, and force the educrats to explore with us, the options of (I would say advantages of) small schools. There is plenty of research already available on the topic and most of it is positive.
As for Doug’s last comment that “only teachers know how to teach”, I must respectfully disagree. I think this is where education has gone off the rails and the educrats were allowed to take control. Superintendents are fond of calling themselves “educators” as a means of ending a discussion with which they are not comfortable. I think everyone is an “educator” and teachers are one component of a child’s education, although a very, very important part.
While teachers are the focus of a child’s education, the child will not be truly educated if she/he only learns from a teacher. It’s important that learning come from parents, siblings, grand-parents, neighbours, townsfolk, and the whole community. In this age that broader education has become even more important because if those of us who are close to the children do not educate them then, aside from their teachers, the education will come from television, video games, music videos and such.
That’s why it’s important to keep children in or near their communities when educating them. If they are bused out of town most of the opportunity for community influence is gone.
I’m not very well informed at all about how schools teach children now or about the qualifications for teaching this or that. What I do know is that when Superintendents are selling school closure to parents because their kids will have 110 programs at the big box school as opposed to only 59 at the community school, something is wrong. When a DoE spokesperson is asked on radio how she knows kids are getting a better education in 2011 than they were in 2001 and she answers that, “we’ve introduced 50 new programs in that time”, I know something is wrong. When, despite (or because of) the plethora of programming, children are graduating grade 12 unable to read a newspaper article and comprehend it enough to report back accurately on what it says, when they can’t make change in the store without the cash machine telling them what it is, I know something is wrong.
Surely there has to be enough good will and concern in the community using this blog to come together for something constructive rather than using it to promote our own dogma and attack one another.
Perhaps we could have a virtual Occupy School Boards!
Well said Ron. Dogma is unfortunately part of the system, entrenched, and institutionalized, that deeply impacts policy direction and at the end the achievement of students and their future pathways.
As for Doug’s comments, I too had them thrown at me, when I was advocating for my child and her education needs. It is a predictable response from educrats to defend any threats that tarnishes the dogma and ideology, exposing it for what it is.
Only virtual? The real threat is when voices are heard above the loud voices of the education system.
Perhaps we could have a virtual Occupy School Boards!
_____________________________________________________
Only virtual?
The claim that teachers cannot teach all the curriculum outcomes is a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the focus and emphasis is on the processes, and not the actual obtainment of knowledge. Below, Is a typical curriculum outline, found across all provinces, and in this case math.
“Presented at the start of every grade outlined in this curriculum document is a set of seven expectations that describe the mathematical processes students need to learn and apply as they work to achieve the expectations outlined within the five strands. The need to highlight these process expectations arose from the recognition that students should be actively engaged in applying these processes throughout the program, rather than in connection with the mathematical processes that support effective learning in mathematics are as follows:
• problem solving
• reasoning and proving
• reflecting
• selecting tools and computational strategies
• connecting
• representing
• communicating the particular strands.”
Click to access math18curr.pdf
Reading the rest of the document, is a treat of how to dumb down curriculum, and create difficulties for students, parents, teachers and the school trustees, sorting out the knowledge that must be known, and the remainder, that is of no value to the student and the next level in math. .”
Some will argued that curriculum outcomes, standards is based on institutionalized “liberal racism.” .
“Why is this kind of mediocrity promoted by so many education professors and education experts? We suggest that it is simply good intentions gone awry, resulting in institutionalized “liberal racism.” Liberal education experts fear that minority students can’t learn real math because of “cultural differences.” They recognize that it would be preposterous to lower standards only for those students while maintaining high standards for other groups. Thus, the education experts lower standards for everyone, with “authentic assessment” replacing hard-core, standardized tests, and so-called “higher order thinking” supplanting basic skills.
The clearest refutation of the racism disguised by the Framework comes from the work of Jaime Escalante, the teacher who was immortalized in the movie, “Stand and Deliver.” Mr. Escalante proved beyond any doubt that minority students from poor neighborhoods can do as well in mathematics as any other group. His methods were traditional and “non fuzzy.”
As with “Whole Language Learning,” education professors will indoctrinate pre-service teachers in the “new new math.” As time goes on, it will be harder to undo the damage. A component of this “fuzzy math” approach is to encourage unearned self-esteem and some students, parents, and even teachers may be misled into a false sense of achievement. ”
http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/96.html
This dogma is entrench throughout society, and more importantly in government policy formation throughout the entire education system, on the attempt of evening the playing field among the differing abilities, skills and intelligence of students, done under social justice policies, inclusive policies, and equality policies, to where all standards and outcomes are dropped according to the SEC factors and other variables of the classroom to a level of challenge that is within reach of the students in a classroom. Knowledge, and the learning of knowledge becomes secondary, as well as other basic skills that are crucial because learning is cumulative, building upon knowledge,in order to move to the next level of knowledge.
It is why today, the individual classrooms of a school, between schools, districts, province wide as well as nationally, each one is heavily dependent on the values that is held by the individual teachers, and as groups going up to the national level.
The teachers cannot master all of the outcomes for their students, because the curriculum outcomes are designed to evening the playing field of the SEC factors, and have very little time in ensuring students are building their knowledge base. As for trustees, their job has been made that much more difficult when the focus is no longer on the individual students, and as a group, based on their abilities, but on the SEC factors of the students.
Policies are designed to elicit measures of evening out the playing field, and achievement comes secondary, and sometimes it is at the bottom of the list. The trustees of the Nova Scotia school board, made its mistake by straying away from the dogma and ideology of the education system, the values that are held, and move to the direction of looking after the best interests of the individual students, their needs, as a group, and for the communities. Small schools is the answer, but it is not a value that goes along with the equity approaches that strives for all to become the norm, and eschewing differences. In small schools, difficult to even out the playing field, on SEC factors and other soft variables, to where differences among the individuals in a small school, is desired to create diversity along the lines of the abilities and skills of the students, and not on the SEC factors, and let us all pretend policies that strives for mediocrity, sameness, and identical standards on ability, skills and knowledge set of students.
If trustees became aware and stood up at the school boards, and say enough is enough, and start asking the tough questions that have never been asked on curriculum policies and outcomes, that makes the trustees jobs that much more difficult. Than there will be actual debate on the dogma and ideology that is so entrenched in the public education system, And the Ontario link of curriculum outcomes for math, is a window into the dogma and ideology that strives for mediocrity in achievement.
I just want to clarify that I was not accusing Doug of being dogmatic. My concern is that everyone has dug in on their own views and does not appear to be listening to what the others are saying.
I disagree with the system because it has, apparently, failed society’s children. I think, next to children, the most neglected and abused people in the system are likely teachers.
Can we stop name calling and responding with attacks? Let’s just each of us set out our thoughts and then when we respond to the thoughts of others we do it in a respectful manner, assuming the other person holds those thoughts honestly and without a hidden agenda.
Thanks.
Ron raises several sensible points in his evaluation of educators (specialized and within the community) and who is qualified. Many of those points are reflective of initiatives which will have to be implimented in order to see the waves build toward community renewal. Remember community based education?
Skills and human assets in small communities can easily be suffocated by politics and educrats with a systematic myopic vision. The explosion of programs to lure students and their parents to greener centralized pastures proffered by the department (of centralization) has split many a fine community. Sensible IT offerings and inovations are often seen as prohibitive to centralization. Previous blogs have brought out the threats to the system, and the benefits from IT also.
Realisticly, disruption has already taken place with the firing of the SSRSB on the grounds of governance. A stand was taken and the democratic battle was temporarily lost to a tea and crumpetgate.
Parents from all over the province are watching and discussing this one. I can only imagine the goverment’s staff focus on the fall out. The review of school improvements funding is already a strong indication of their objectives.
However, the long term prognosis will, and should be established with the recognition of assests, not liabilities. So a summit for small school sustainability should be encouraged and participated in by all those who care for our children’s education.
It doesn’t really matter where the small community is; the factors are mostly the same.
We had a Minister of Education in Ontario who said to a room full of teacher leaders, “I think more than just teachers can teach.”
One of the teacher leaders responded, “I would not say that near any teachers if I were you.”
Somehow the notion is out there that it is easy to teach. Just try it some time and you will learn very quickly how difficult it is. I think you labour under the illusion that teachers do what they want. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Raise children – that’s teaching.
The same small rural school argument has been advanced for 150 years of rural depopulation. There is nothing here to see. Read the history of education in Ontario or any other province. This is just the latest manifestation of a historic process working itself out.
“this is just the latest manifestation of a historic process working itself out.”
——————————————————————————————–
… so said the centralist.
“It rips the guts out of a community to lose a school. No business wants to locate where their CEO’s own children need long bus rides. The town of Durham in Ontario went into sharp decline when it lost its schools to a consolidated Hanover, Walkerton regional system.”
Doug
… so said the renewalist.
Click to access 5051rr_rural_beat_the_odds.pdf
But keep in mind, the collective and personal experiences of those who comment, to which the personal convictions, beliefs are a result of the experiences. Than comes the dogma, and for some folks it is more important to value the dogma, and defend it, than it is to see the multiple facets of any issues.
I personally try not to lead my life by dogma and ideology, but others live, breathe and make decisions through the dogma and ideology, rather than the hard work of determining if the dogma and ideology rings true with the individual’s experiences and knowledge base.
Developmentally slow, academically slow, not qualified to speak on education issues, are common examples that are thrown at the parents, based on their own self-proclaimed expertise, by the educrats without confirmation on objective evidence, based purely on the ideology and dogma lines, , and rarely voiced by the individual teachers. I remember the first time, of many times that came after, the grasp of the teacher when the educrat voiced the words of developmentally slow, and than proceed to lecture me that I should accept the limitations of my child, based on the dogma and ideology. The teacher put in the extra mile with my child, trying her best to remediate the learning difficulties and what my children needed was an assessment yesterday, and not a denial. Now tell me if this is not dogma and ideology, when the educrat denied the assessment on the basis that she did not qualified for the assessment based on passing grades, and yet the educrat insisted my child was developmentally slow, on his own dogma without objective evidence to support his stance.
In the world of public education, based on my experiences, assuming those within the education system go beyond their personal dogma and ideologies, is dangerous to parents as well as their children’s education and their futures. It should be a given, and with Doug, that certainly holds true, as it did with the many different confrontations that I have with educrats based on their dogma and ideology, dealing with the road blocks to prevent access to SE services and accommodations, that they insisted my child did not need, and at the same time, insisting that my child at the very best will reach a 60 percent average. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, a lot of hard work and effort on my part to where presently my child has 90 averages in her sciences, math in the 80s, and a steady 70 something average in English, her weakest subject. The school board trustees need to become aware of the individual stories of parents and their children, in the light of the dogma and ideology that is being used to make education decisions by the school board staff. that ultimately has negative impacts on the child’s education and their future.
“Then comes the dogma, and for some folks it’s more important to value the dogma and defend it, than to see the multiple facets of any issues.”
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Nancy has pulled back the curtain on one overly problematic sticking point with the educratocracy – dogma as a lever for power.
Dogma shutters small community schools rather than opens them up, as we have read. Dogma restricts opportunity when it comes knocking. But dogma is power, lest we forget.
“The most distinctive feature of both condign and compensatory power is their objectiviy – or visibility. Those accepting the will of others are conscious of doing so; they are acting in consequence of a fairly deliberate calculation that this is the better course of action. It has become so because of the offer of some specific quid pro quo for their submission. Those exercising the power are also purposefully aware of what they are doing.”
Galbraith – The Anatomy of Power
Quid pro quo (this for that) reveals much about the educratic wall faced at the local level of educational democracy (school boards).
As Gallbraith asserts; “the difference between condign and compensatory powere is the difference between negative and affirmative rewards.”
All educrats know this. It is the trustee who on occasion may question this.
Not to sound like a conspiracy nut but one wonders if those smaller schools aren’t being deliberately programmed to fail in order to support the “bigger is better” theory.
If one goes through the boards in Nova Scotia we seem to find the same consultants” working behind the scenes.
The pursuit of centralization is a single issue objective by the educrats. It has become a principle source of control in postmodern education. Where they have it over communities is that they are united in their objectives.
Keeping a local school is a very good objective but you need to realize that you are up against forces that are very strong. This movement has existed at both polarities for 150 years. In the end, the locals have almost always lost.
Technology may change this, research on small schools may change this. Keep in mind you are dealing with an opposing force that is certain that it is also right.
I can see the small school fights now up against the new austerity program of the Ontario Liberals. I am working to have the NDP insist on a moritorium on school closures for a while since McGuinty is one seat short. Now the provincial Tories need to look at the fact that THEY represent most rural ridings but they are the ones demanding even stronger measures to cut back the public sector. You can’t suck and blow at the same time.
Many years ago on the Toronto board, we had an NDP half of the board that insisted no schools close and a Tory half of the board that insisted we close some small schools. I moved a motion that schools be closed but only in the wards of the trustees that insisted on closing schools. You should have seen the Tories turn themselves into a pretzel on that one. The motion passed but they wanted to go to court and the province to have it overturned.
The end result? No schools closed.
“This movement has existed at both polarities for 150 years. In the end, the locals have almost always lost. ”
Because the power has always been moving away from the local community, and into the hands of governments and bureaucrats, more so when government funding of education took place, and the march to centralization of all things education. However, Doug, school closures take place in the arena of dogma, ideology, and not on the cold hard facts in an open transparent way. The current process is asking parents and other concern citizens to based their decision on the dogma and ideology and not on the cold hard facts, for the best interests of the students and communities.
In my opinion, judging from the articles, the SSRSB trustees were canned, because the bureaucrats and the ministry was losing the battle and the school closure processes and protocols created by the same were no longer working towards the pre-determined goal of closing down the schools. No longer working, because the parents and other interested citizens moved away from the dogma, and were debating the cold hard facts that were presented by the bureaucrats of the ministries and school board staff. By canning the trustees, and insert an appointee of one, it was to regain control and power to be able to guide the conversations and debate.
Good luck on that one, because the actions did some serious damage to trust and relationship building, that may never be recovered, in the SSRSB district and communities. By the way, it might be a good time for parents to make requests on the behalf of your children, the trustee of one would be incline to grant them, without the dogma and ideology hitting one’s face.
Centralization of power and authority reaches a certain point, where it is no longer effective, and where no one at the bottom is adhering to policy and procedure. From what I have read on centralization, power and authority eventually will unwind and flow down to the bottom levels. A theory, but it depends of the dogma and ideology, the glue that holds centralization processes together.
Doug said: “I moved a motion that schools be closed but only in the wards of the trustees that insisted on closing schools……….
The end result? No schools closed.”
Now that I like!!!!!!!!! Tells it like it is, doesn’t it?
If memory serves me, it was how the South Shore School Board got into hot water, with members threatening one another with voting to close schools in the others wards! Apparently their big mistake was doing it behind closed doors and not out in the open!
Galbraith – “Instead, his hope in writing ”The Anatomy of Power” is that ”the reader will emerge from these pages with a reasonably solid sense of the nature and structure of power.” Thus he offers us his handy triad of condign, compensatory and conditioned power and their three primary sources – personality, property and organization. Thus he seeks to avoid the ”dense complexity” and ”deep subjectivity” to which theories of power typically fall prey. After all, as he puts it, ”All conclusions on power can be tested against generally acceptable historical evidence and most of them against everyday observation and uncomplicated common sense.”
The result is so intricately yet neatly put together that you can almost hear it ticking. And just as Professor Galbraith hoped would be the case, one of its chief fascinations lies in the number of windows it opens on everyday life. You can see its principles at work in the broad sweep of history: for instance, it is in the author’s observation that great concentrations of power tend to produce countervailing forces that one may understand why it took a Hitler to produce a Churchill and Roosevelt and why today great bureaucracies have taken the place of great men. And of almost equal interest is his corollary that some of the most successful countervailing forces have been asymmetrical ones, such as Gandhi’s use of satyagraha or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent resistance. Yet one can just as easily employ Professor Galbraith’s rules to figure out why the dog won’t obey. ”
Compared to the theory of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed of Paulo Freire, where power is obtained only through the political processes and dogma., entrenched in the present education system, and in the curriculum and policies of the education system.
” Freire believed education to be a political act that could not be divorced from pedagogy. Freire defined this as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the “politics” that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions they bring into the classroom (Kincheloe, 2008).[5] Freire believed that “education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing — of knowing that they know and knowing that they don’t” (Freire, 2004, p. 15)[6]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire
I would rather have people, especially parents to come to understand the power structures against their own experiences and knowledge. One will come to the conclusion fairly quickly, there is danger accepting the words without ever seriously question the words and actions that speaks the opposite. of the words. Quite frankly, the first time I came across it, I was quite shock, naive in terms of knowledge, but my mother’s instincts were in full alert – red alert, bells were clanging inside my head, and I pretended to agree without voicing verbally that I agree, to retreat for the next battle of wits, when I knew more knowledge. So as the years worn on, each conversation was a practice, and each time I improve my skills and abilities to do battle with the dogma and ideology, and get the educrats to focus on the issues. I am positive, and I know it to be true, that parents are a threat to the public education system when the parents become consciously aware of the dogma and ideology of the education system, that serves the agendas and special interests of those who work within the public education system.
Malkin Dare has written a fine Letter to the Editor ( Kitchener-Waterloo Record Dec. 15, 2011) with this enticing title “Forget Big Brother, school boards want to be Big Mother.”
http://www.therecord.com/opinion/letters/article/640410–what-use-are-school-trustees?mid=5594
It’s worth reprinting in full:
“Regardless of the pros and cons of monopolistic day care, the fact that this controversial matter was decided behind closed doors two years ago without trustee consultation raises the question of who is calling the shots at local school boards.
What is the point of having trustees if they are powerless?
Are they providing only the trappings of democracy?
If so, the money could be better spent in classrooms.
(Malkin Dare, president, Society for Quality Education, Waterloo)
Comment:
Too much “Big Mother” is almost as bad as “Big Brother” when it comes to the perversion of local education democracy. Well said, Malkin!
Malkin is correct in this respect, you need to move one way or the other. This way, neutured boards catch the flack for decisions but have little ability to influence the decisions. Collective bargaining is next to go totally provincial.
Either put the boards out of their misery or return all of the power they had before Harris including the power to control property taxes.
The boards need either all or none of the control.
On day care, much as Malkin would like a debate, there is no debate. All 3 political parties support the ELP. It is time to extend the program down to 2 year olds.
I`d like to congratulate Nancy on her recent posting.
Stating that,Doug`s recent statement lacks integrity just as Dalton does,how dare he push a day care bureaucracy on Ontarians who are already facing a billion dollar deficit.Will the Liberals stop at nothing?The have not province has just about had enough!
Let`s get him out and start dealing with the Unions and get some of that great common sense revolution going again to balance drunken spending and catering to the Unions.
I think the discussion has gone off the rails. It sounds now as if finding solutions is not as important as pushing out-dated, disproved, political and economic theories.
We started discussing whether it was appropriate for provincial governments to dismiss elected school boards. In Nova Scotia, those school boards have no taxing ability so are wholly dependent on the provincial government for their financing. (Municipalities do pay some towards education but it is collected by the province and then distributed to the school boards.)
It seems to me that one cannot fault a provincial government for requiring a subservient body which it funds, to be accountable for the expenditure of those funds and answerable if it is shown to be failing at the mission with which it has been charged.
Given that school boards (in NS at least) have no fund raising ability, does it make any sense to have an elected board? Elected bodies are most often seen as entities that can set policy and direction for themselves, decide how to get to where they want to go and then be answerable for the cost of all that.
With school boards the DoE sets the curriculum, dictates the most important policies, and decided how and whether to provide funding. In NS that means the province avoids being accountable for day to day failings of the system because “we are not the employer” and “that’s something you’ll have to take up with your school board”.
On the other hand, again in NS, school boards and their provincial association readily blame the province for everything that goes wrong and it’s always because there is not enough money. At election time no one is held accountable because the candidates for school board office all blame their failings on the province.
There used to be a time in NS when school boards were made up of representatives appointed by the province, representatives appointed by the municipality and representatives appointed from the community. Later, the representatives from the community were elected by the provincial and municipal representatives were still appointed.
This meant that the province and the municipality had a direct link to the school board and could be held answerable, at least in part, for its actions.
In NS, district health boards are all appointed as are the local hospital boards that advise them. I believe they play more of an advisory role that a governance role, ensuring the hospital and district health authorities are informed about the needs and desires of the citizens and feeding information back to the community, often through public meetings.
Would appointed, advisory school boards be a better model than the elected, governance boards?
Maybe you missed the election Jo Anne. ALL 3 PARTIES, the McGuinty Liberals, the Hudak Tories and the Horwath NDP ALL supported the ELP. Eventually it will be extended down to 2 year olds bit by bit.
Insiders told Hudak, if you oppose the ELP you will lose the election for sure just as JT lost it over faith based school funding. Our polls said the same thing. daycare is incredibly popular. Anybody who opposes it will be politically crushed. We need the state to take a much more active interest in children from birth to age 5.
“I think the discussion has gone off the rails. It sounds now as if finding solutions is not as important as pushing out-dated, disproved, political and economic theories.”
Ron, the solutions and the discussion of the solutions cannot take in the absent of the political, economic, and social science theories that has created the current power structure, responsibilities , the delivery of education, the processes/protocols, and everything to do with education, right down to how many sheets of toilet paper for each school.
Appointed advisory school boards, will only succeed to decrease autonomy at the local level, and more important slamming the future doors of students, their education potential the dumbing down of their education, mediocrity rather than high standards and removing all innovative and creative solutions that do not fit the dogma/ideology and political values of the collective and the individuals of the education system.
It certainly sounds to me, Ron, you are advocating for the status-quo, to maintain the current power structures, to prevent the collective experiences, as well as the individuals outside the education system to taint the ideology and dogma within the education system, which is the fuel that has led to the power struggles within the public education system.
To compare health advisory boards to education, are two very different beasts. Health advisory boards are in place, to maintain the high standards that is required in delivering heath services. Whereas, school board trustees, parent councils, and other education panels, the current make-up, division of power and autonomy are there to maintain the dogma and ideologies of the collective public education system. The delivery of health services is dealt on the lines of science and best practices and not the dogma and ideology thoughts of individuals and groups within the power structures of a health system.
The present structure of the education system, prevents local autonomy and in turns prevents local schools to provide the education needs for their communities, as well as the individual needs of the students. Or in other words,Ron, are you advocating for decrease autonomy, restricted rule-bound processes to control the actions and behaviours of the local schools, communities, and the individuals at the lowest levels, to where education needs is based on the dogma and ideology?
Hi Nancy: No, I’m not advocating for dumbing down the education system. My concern is that under a system of elected school boards in NS, that seems to have happened and the school boards present us with the picture of a democratic governance that is a sham. Further, it appears to have been designed to lull parents and citizens into a false sense of feeling that the elected board is looking after our interests.
All that’s happened in NS is that the Minister of Education and the D0E are not held accountable because there is a democratically elected school board in charge. Meanwhile, the school board is not held accountable because the provincial government funds it and sets the key directions.
I’m not a really big fan of elected bodies that have no authority and no effective control over their own affairs. Having control is pretty difficult when someone else holds the purse strings and sets the policies.
Do I want school boards setting policy and having taxing power? Based on the caliber of school board we’ve had in NS since the 1980s I’d have to say “no”. I’m also concerned that a school board is so narrowly focused that it does not take the rest of the community’s concerns into consideration, as happened with the closing of Lunenburg’s schools.
I’m open to the idea if it can be shown to have worked – over the long term – in other jurisdictions but I’d be concerned that getting elected to a school board would only be used by aspiring politicians as the first step to entering municipal or provincial politics. Much of that goes on in NS even now.
There is simply no chance that Nova Scotians are ever going to agree to have another level of government taxing them, so having self-funded school boards is not on the agenda in this province. Given that the elected school board has no power to affect curriculum or school policy as it relates to education, could an un-elected, advisory school board have more influence by focusing on those two things and leaving building maintenance and staffing issues to the administration? Just asking, because I do not yet know the answer.
Finally, while the public system, with elected boards, seems to be failing miserably at delivering the education we all want for our young citizens, why are independent schools, with no pretense of democracy, able to turn out educated children? I do not believe it is because the profit motive makes them do it. as many of them are not privately operated for profit. Why does the public system refuse to learn from the independent system?
Ron Stockton: With school boards the DoE sets the curriculum, dictates the most important policies, and decided how and whether to provide funding. In NS that means the province avoids being accountable for day to day failings of the system because “we are not the employer” and “that’s something you’ll have to take up with your school board”.
On the other hand, again in NS, school boards and their provincial association readily blame the province for everything that goes wrong and it’s always because there is not enough money. At election time no one is held accountable because the candidates for school board office all blame their failings on the province.
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And who created this unworkable model?
Andrew: The provincial government ultimately approved the model. I don’t know what kind of consultative process took place to come up with the model.
Constitutionally the province has jurisdiction over education so it will always have to be the province that approves any model. In the end, however, all the citizens of the province elect the provincial government and I cannot imagine those citizens returning a government to office that gave school boards taxing authority.
Personally, I don’t see the need for school boards at all.
NS isn’t that big a province so why not let principals run their respective schools and teachers teach their respective classes with the province setting a standard?
The rest seems to be nothing more than decoration.
I hadn’t thought of that possibility Andrew. If the Principal ran the school then, I guess, you would see no need for either the elected board or the bureaucracy that goes with each board. To whom would the Principal answer directly in this scenario?
In NS we now have volunteer School Advisory Committees that act as advisory councils for the school and that can disseminate information from the school to the community. In the model you suggest, would these bodies be given more importance?
While the Principal, in theory, could handle all the educational matters including special needs and educational materials, how would you propose maintenance be looked after? Would there be, perhaps, a provincial maintenance department with regional offices?
Does anyone know of a model such as Andrew has suggested? (Send links if you can.)
School Advisory Councils are legislated and have elected representatives. Parents cast their ballots for their favorite rep.. Keep in mind the task of the school advisory council tends to get problematic during the lead up to school closures.
The SAC has a responsibility to request an independent advisor to obtain information from the school board staff when assessing impact assessment studies for example. This is left up to school boards to decide (see the problem?).
The SAC carries a lot of weight in a comunity on this point. Their recommendations should be not be unduely influenced by town councils or school board trustees with political incentives. But invariably a relative ends up in a position of influence – the nature of small towns. Heck, politics in general.
If they (the SAC’s) do not look for impartial advisors they generally reflect the biases rooted in the reveiw closure process; this was graphic in the Lunenburg case for example where the elected school board trustee was supportive of school closures and centralization, the town council prematurely recommended closure for the big box carrot, and the community in general never had access to a preliminary consultant’s report subsequent to the public input process.
The responsibility of maintainance issues with any new school should be interesting. I understand the heating costs for NSCAD’s waterfront campus are 600,000.00 per year!
There needs to be democratic governance at some level. I agree with those who say emasculated boards without taxing, collective bargaining and curriculum control are just f*rt catchers with no real role. Personally the better route is to revert to boards with full taxing power and the poor boards with little local assessment get top ups from the province. This may be pure but highly unlikely. NB experimented with no boards but went back to boards right?
Do MLA (MPPs) want every family with a grievance to shlep to Halifax to meet them about the mean teacher in grade 3 at Upper Rubber Boot PS?
Education governance is a mess but the best governance puts the money and the responsibility in the same hands whichever hands they are.
To whom would the Principal answer directly in this scenario.
Department of Education – they have an overabundance of bureaucracy as it is.
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In the model you suggest, would these bodies be given more importance?
It’s worth investigating.
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While the Principal, in theory, could handle all the educational matters including special needs and educational materials, how would you propose maintenance be looked after? Would there be, perhaps, a provincial maintenance department with regional offices?
Ah, one of my pet peeves. One of the problems we have is the lack of administrative/management competence.
While there are many competent educators, how many of them are competent managers?
There could be centralized buying of some sort.
Does anyone know of a model such as Andrew has suggested? (Send links if you can.)
Couldn’t find any mention of school boards in Finland but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them.
Oops
http://www.oph.fi/english/education
For once I agree with Doug, that taxing authority of school boards should be returned but with conditions. Even the poorest of communities have the ability to tax, but are limited to the amount that is taxed, compared to the wealthier communities. Having the ability to tax, having government topped off poor communities still will not address the education of students under the current governance models, where the top-down approaches works for the goals of the top tier and the top tiers download accountability and responsibilities in a downward direction.
Two things has to happen, before taxation can returned, the autonomy of schools in curriculum, instruction, resources that fit the best needs of the communities and the students’ individual needs and as a group. To where the principal ls the leader, under a community panel, composed of elected and non-elected appointees, paid or volunteer who become the central point and focus on meeting the twin goals of meeting the community’s needs and the individual students’ needs.
The next layer above the schools, is the school board and staff who facilitate the connections between the provincial department of education, other arms of education, a clearinghouse of curriculum and instruction methods based on the science, and other related education material, and also function to provide resources to take advantage of scale for common resources and supplies found in all schools. The school board would function in the light of working to provide and meeting the needs of the individual schools,
The department of education, functions as a clearinghouse, passing down education information, on curriculum, instruction, research, and other information down to the lower levels and directly to the schools. At the school level, the local school panel will make the decision as to what material and information should be passed down and to whom it should be passed.
The ministry of education, should be the ones to guide essential policies of the overall system, but sill working in the light of the bottom to top structure by way of regulations and legislation for smooth operations, as well as placing limits and controls on all things educations, as well as to limit power and influence that are destructive to autonomy at the local levels, as well as politicizing the school process.
Finland has such a governance structure in place, which I believe is the number one factor that has remove the politics from education, and in its place, all levels from the top, work to serve the lowest level, the communities and the schools. As for taxation, limits must be placed on because wealthier communities would soon have gold-plated light switches, and other goodies that has nothing to do addressing the needs of the individual students. In a community in the one I live in, a model above if was put in operation; no doubt in my mind, reading, writing and numeracy instruction would change dramatically and every inch of whole language, inventive spelling, and all of the other crazy fads would be replaced in a wink of an eye. Unions would be happy, because they would maintain their position within the system, still dealing with the boards and province, ensuring the best interests of their members, through the window of local communities and schools and their needs. One group of unhappy campers, will be the ones pushing education products and supplies for a profit, because they would no longer have the luxury of dealing with a few, but dealing with thousands of schools trying to woo them into buying their products.
Today, I posted a Commentary @OpenFileHFX on the Halifax Regional School Board and its increasing tendency to operate behind closed doors.
With Halifax Regional Council under the microscope, the HRSB flies below the radar screen. Curtailing public meetings, dropping the term “elected board” and the whole Cornwallis JHS renaming exercise are prime examples of an elected board in retreat mode.
Here’s the link:
http://halifax.openfile.ca/halifax/text/commentary-halifax-regional-school-boards-talking-heads-and-closed-doors
After the firing of the South Shore Board of Education, it’s up to us to do what we can to insure proper public accountability and local democratic control over the schools.
When elected trustees go into hiding, they threaten to undermine the whole system of local education governance.
Paul: Your description of the goings-on at HRSB make me lean more towards getting rid of elected school boards.
We cannot simply blame the bureaucrats for the whole mess, although they deserve plenty of the blame. Elected board members – that’s, “elected” – who don’t or can’t stand up for the democratic process should not be there. If the Superintendent says “jump” and they say “how high?”, that’s not the Superintendent’s fault.
They are elected! They can only be removed from office during the term by the Minister of Education and that would always be a notable event at which the elected member in question would surely get his/her point across.
Sometimes it’s easier for elected folks (school board and municipal) to avoid accountability at the next election by campaigning on the slogan, “the CEO made me do it”.
Your the expert on this stuff. You must have examples of where this model has worked and where other models have worked. Where can I find them?
Thanks
Review the staff – problem solved.
I don’t believe that elections necessarily equal democracy and they certainly do not equal competency. We have a democratic province, not every service it delivers needs to be delivered by another level of government through an elected body.
Andrew’s suggestion could easily be as democratic but, if we used volunteer School Advisory Committees (elected or appointed) it would bring influence right to the community which the school serves. I note that the Finnish model has the country setting the goals but the municipalities deliver the education. Should we go back to a system (as we once had in NS) where the municipalities deliver education?
If that were the model, we would have elected officials to ultimately hold responsible and those elected folks would be looking at the big picture in the community, not just one subject matter. Add volunteer School Advisory Committees and that increases the local in-put.
I do not agree with Nancy that allowing the province through the DoE to set policies and curriculum with the school boards working to meet the needs of the individual schools will give us anything but a top down system. Especially if the province is allowed to dictate the maximum taxes a school board can collect.
Having said that, from the point of view of our society, why would we want every local area essentially determining its own agenda for education? Is it not better that education be a province wide responsibility (goals, policy, curriculum, funding) and, like Finland, we find innovative ways to deliver what is needed at the local level. Perhaps School Advisory Committees, freed from the harness of funding, could help teachers adapt the curriculum as necessary for that school’s students, could have the license to work with teachers to try new methods, and so on.
Why do we need the elected school board, in its present form, in between the province/D0E and the local school? Isn’t that where, at present, the message gets distorted and the money gets wasted?
Andrew suggested we could have centralized purchasing for financial efficiency. Why not also centralized (or perhaps, regionalized) maintenance department for cleaning and maintaining the schools?
This would cut out 9 huge bureaucracies in NS, likely saving a great deal of money yet locally there is opportunity for community in-put and influence on the education related matters.
School boards with the ability to tax? It’s simply not going to happen in my life time or my children’s. Let’s look for other alternatives.
I still do not see why appointed boards are OK for health authorities and hospitals but only elected boards will do for schools. Health care is a whole lot more than pure science. For example, there is the aspect of preventative health care – people in the community keeping healthy. They don’t need elected boards to have hospitals adopt that policy or to deliver it to the community.
We’re getting older, we need assisted care facilities and nursing home facilities and homes for special care and facilities for those mental disabilities. The provision of such services and how they are delivered is not a question of science alone, but more a decision society makes about what it wants to do with these people.
Than Ron, you are still advocating for the top-down approach, and changing the bottom level, giving control autonomy processes, with the provincial standards and the regulation regime ruling the roost on the thou-shall and the thou shall not rules. The politicization will still be in place, governing what knowledge and information is relevant at the bottom levels, and more than likely the misconceptions and questionable practices remain in place on all sides,
What makes you think preventive practices are in place in any education system and its governance in the first place, in the same matter as it is in the health system? The current education policies are not the kind that prevents failure of students, nor are the policies pro-active, The education policies concerning the delivery of education, as well as the policies concerning the individual students are policies that wait for students to fail, and than stemmed the tide using a series of processes and gate keeper access to the solutions, the resources within defined parameters. In other words, as long as a student is obtaining a 50 %, there is no problem, and the congratulations and patting themselves on a good job. Preventive practices is not even in the eye of the educrats, judging the curriculum and instruction practices that is currently keeping many of a student, low achieving and in waiting lines for the simplest remediation.
Not only advocating for the top-down approach, but as well to maintain the power and controls among the top levels in education. Essentially, what is being advocate for, is a hybrid centralization model, where the power structures remain in place, and controls the processes of innovations and practices at the lowest levels, the schools. It prevents parents and the communities from actively participating to work for what is best for their communities and the students. As well as promoting the image that has been well-polished over the years, the bureaucrats and the educrats are in charge and know what is best for their citizens.
However, under a decentralization model, a bottom to top approach, the different parts of the education bureaucracy, their knowledge, and yes their expertise based on their experiences, takes on a powerful role, providing and sorting out the knowledge, information, from all points in society and in the various fields, sorting out the bad from the good, and all that is good, being passed down to the schools and the communities. The schools and communities will decide, based on the needs and decisions can be made, in the light of their budgets and finance. There would be no gain for the educrats to pushed for this curriculum, or pushed for this from the big guys in the education publishers, because the funding controls rests at the bottom. The educrats would have no choice but to go to the individual communities and sell it to the locals, and in current practice, the educrats sell it to other educrats laterally, and up to the higher levels. And no one is held accountable for selling the bottom levels a false bill of goods, because of the many controls and rules that have been placed unto the bottom levels, and in the end the public is blame, and each level of the education system not has the ability to denied and never be held to account for their actions.
Whereas, at the local level, in a bottom-top approach, accountability will be swift, especially when the decisions of a school, rested on curriculum reports from above, that praise it, and did not live up to its promise. One just has to look at the current math curriculum in any province, and the disaster it is. However, Ron, the current math curriculum may be your cup of tea, and if you don’t mind the poor foundational math skills of our clerks and cashiers that are weak in discounts, L X W, and other math operations, that are essential to operate and navigate in this world, in any job and in all aspects of life.
Any hybrid model of the top-down approach is a recipe to manage people and their actions/behaviours, as well as to control the power, authority, and finances reins.
Than Ron, you are still advocating for the top-down approach
Not necessarily.
“Any hybrid model of the top-down approach is a recipe to manage people and their action/behaviors, as well a to control the power, authority, and financial reins.”
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As Nancy pointed out earlier a shared governance partnership is worthy of consideration. We do not have it now despite the ministers sound bites about class size averages, or reprobate school boards, while pandering to the cameras for question period.
But before that may happen some fallout should be considered if the goverment actually looked at its own system – as Andrew accurately stated “an unworkable model” subject to decay.
Any governance audit has parameters. However, if a governance audit took place with the intention of assessing a top down approach to policy as it relates to staff – not school boards, it may/would self destruct without measures to incorporate community resolutions on partnership.
Those community resolutions would have to be in place first if government were to entertain a review essentially of itself. It would bring out into the open why the educrats continue to influence policy at the expense of our local educational democracy, and then how partnering with communities can restore confidence in a more inclusive fashion. Politically painful to say the least, but it must happen.
Communities must act first.
To date, community involvement with government on education policy has been restricted and symbolic at best. Just data to be distorted for centralization.
…and the consolidation of power.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/122111/news/index023.php
Wow Steven, amazing the trustee board of one thinks the recent actions will promote trust.
“I think it”s critical for us to ensure, as Deloitte pointed out in its report on governance, that we deal with this as soon as possible,” said the new one-person board member at a December 15 meeting when she suspended all bylaws, effective immediately, and approved some interim procedures and an agenda template.”
Replace with what? Oh yes, here the template, in education circles they only little rules created far in advance, to tell the people, if you don’t like it, tough, and by the way, issues and what will be discussed will be control for your own good.
“”A review of the South Shore Regional School Board found the board members were focused on administrative and operational considerations at the expense of being focused on their true responsibilities,” she explained.
Further recommendations made in the Deloitte report are expected to be addressed sometime prior to the next board elections in October 2012.
“We want to keep the focus on the students while also making sure to lay a foundation for the elected officials when they come back to the board next fall.”
Ms Sullivan-Corney also approved a new format for public meetings, including the website posting of tentative agendas on the first Friday of each month, followed by a public submissions meeting on the third Wednesday, a week before the regular SSRSB meeting.
“I”m trying to find ways to reach out to those who want to provide information to the board.”
The first public input session is scheduled for January 18.
“It will be for the purpose of connecting with parents and students to help me understand what”s important to them and what”s important for the future.”
Really, and at the January 18 meeting, if parents truly want to test the new trustee board of one, shape your arguments and place the blame squarely on the board staff, who make very busy work looking after their best interests and students, communities become secondary to their little plots and schemes.
Truly, did the former trustee board have any power, to enact change? Trustees have become neutered, and perhaps the parents could neutralized this trustee board of one. For the record, I don’t believe she wants the focus on the students, or laying the groundwork for the new trustee board, because that has been planned in advance. It is a matter of time and doing the dirty work of advancing to the end goals.
Time to throw wenches of the wild cards, parents in particular and the union, who I honestly think would not like this consolidation of power, and should also speak as parents and teachers. No good, comes from consolidation of power when there was no valid reason to do so. Worse, when it comes in the form of the one man band, and jack of all trades. Let us see, how well she play the many different instruments, when parents, say, it is not the trustees, but the school board staff playing their games, and than their personal story. Or better yet, no one show up, which really would have the one appointed trustee worried, along with the ministry staff, that power grabs may not be the way to engender trust.
wenches? Ok, throw some my way. 😉
The wrenches, are the stories that the school boards love to hide, stating privacy concerns, and such. There has to be a few good ones among the normal citizens who are not under any such weight as the privacy act, and other oaths. Switch the table of conversation, to the quality of education being received for the students. There has to be a few parents in the SSRBD who have been paying tutors, spending long hours after work tutoring their child or has moved to a better school outside of the district. There has to be parents out there, where the board has insisted that there is not anything wrong with their kid, and the board staff proceeds to offer the usual excuses of SEC factors, and the political gamesmanship commences. Trustees and the board staff are intertwined in their relationship, even though each part has different duties and responsibilities. The trustee of one, appointed by the ministry would have no time left dealing with quality of education issues, since quality crosses through the administration processes of trustee boards, the board staff, the department of education, and the ministry.
Citizens of school district, should always look through the window of quality of education and how the changes impact the quality factor of their child’s education or as a group. The trustee of one, wants everyone to look at trustees, but the real problem is the administration and deliver of education, the goal is to cut quality of education to its lowest benchmarks without having the public kick up a storm. It is why, the inclusive classroom is growing by leaps and bounds, to expand the norm, and as a result, students are denied SE services to remediate, and in lieu, accommodations are given in the inclusive classroom. As for closing schools, especially in the day of high transportation costs in stable communities, on the basis of excess space is bogus in the light of the quality of education being received in the big box schools.
It is time for the citizens of SSRBD to change the optics, because the one trustee board is not going to do it, even if she was asked nicely. I would love to know her personal views on children who struggle in learning, because it always shows the personal biases and values they hold. Some actually do hold values that are part of the enlightenment era (1700s), where people are seen as pawns, and not very smart ones.
“Judith Sullivan-Corney, deputy minister and chief executive officer of Aboriginal Affairs, will add Intergovernmental Affairs to her responsibilities. Ms. Sullivan-Corney has more than 26 years experience with the provincial government and has served as the Public Service Commissioner.”
2006
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ms%20sullivan-corney%20&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDoQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rans.ca%2Fdocs%2FAgri_changes.doc&ei=uCnyTpvDB6jf0QHJ6KEg&usg=AFQjCNE3t02yZF7R-uXBCuANApQdPaJY3w&sig2=pVgC_SGfdhZwa7B88SFoLw
In the series of newspaper articles regarding Sullivan-Corney, she is always referred as a former deputy ministry, with no background. or it is not at all mentioned. Time for the good citizens of SSRSB to do some detective work, because Sullivan-Corney is a henchman for the past 30 odd years or so for governments and carrying out their edicts. The general message that the ministry of education wants out, is the former board of trustees was putting learners at risk and their education, and she will be winning the war if the citizens sit back and focus on trustees and their duties, when behind the scenes, the puppet master (the minister of education) is pulling the strings to ensure that quality of education is never connected to the actual education of a student in the final outcomes. To do that, goals and directives must be follow, to prevent the broken puppets with missing strings of following goals and directives, to do something else, like throwing wrenches in their well-oil plans, gumming up the works and on the way to big box schools, the expanding norm in the inclusive classroom, and the dumbing down of education of our children.
“Ms. Sullivan-Corney is a parent, has a strong background in policy, human resources and governance, and has a Bachelor of Education. She will serve until school board elections are held in October 2012.”
http://acdsa.org/
The above quote, and is rather illuminating that a Bachelor of Education has that much prestige in holding deputy ministry jobs in other departments, such as the Aboriginal Affairs. She probably could not find a teacher position, and knew the right people and connections. I am beginning to think, governments and positions that it no longer matters the qualifications of the individuals, but if the person is capable of following orders and edicts of the ministries. What Sullivan-Corney does not have, is a background in the education of students, that would rise above a teacher of 20 years experience, or a principal with 25 years experience, or a parent who has been through hell in obtaining a reasonable quality of education for their children. I lay odds right now, that the citizens of SSRBD can undo the one-trustee board, put her in her place, and change the optics to the quality of education. The one thing the ministry and the henchmen do not want on the table, because they cannot do battle on that front because their biases, misconceptions, gaps in knowledge of the advances in education and learning will clearly show, as well as their leadership going the pathway of dumb-down education for all children, via through the regulation regime and administration processes. What the one-trustee board cannot handle, is the many small fires regarding quality of education issues that have a direct connection to curriculum, instruction, remediation, SE services, ministry directives of bullying policies, and other such related policies that results in negative outcomes for the students, and parents taking actions to counteract the negative outcomes, within the tight restrictions and parameters of the edicts raining down to control the actions of parents, and schools and the trustees.
I lay odds to, that the one-trustee board holds a lot of misconceptions crossing across all domains in education, Isn’t it about time to shake the bushes, and see what comes out?
Unless Ms Sullivan-Corney is that rare bureaucratic bird who actually cares about improving public education those “public input sessions” are nothing but touchy-feely-make momma-feel-valued-bs-sessions.
Yes BS sessions, and they count on the knowledge of citizens being much lower, and disconnected between the individuals of citizens. As citizens, we can count on the biases, values held by the educrats to predict behaviour and reactions to the questions and demands of the citizens. Educrats do not give a toss about the repeated stats that occurred in the individual classrooms of schools. Such stats as the 40 % of students not being grade level in reading at the end of grade 3, and in some schools it reaches 60 percent. A combination of rules, regulations, reading instruction doing it the whole language version, the systemic fault lines designed to block remediation, and many more that are designed to block information, and knowledge vital to the individual parent as well as the sub-groups of parents. The educrats also do not have the high knowledge needed to overturn parents concerns on the quality of education, on the same lines as parents. The educrats overturn on the basis of manipulation, and using the regulation regime to control behaviour. The 40 percent below reading levels, at the end of the grade 3, has now become institutionalized as an acceptable level in any education system, and than the excuses come in the form of the SEC factors, and anything else they can hang on their hat on. More importantly, it is done on the individual basis providing the excuses that fits the parents SEC factors. For me, it was my parenting ability, and for another the single mom, and for another they dance around, and fault the student. Whatever the excuse, as long as the parents are dancing the dance of the educrats, and not dancing on the knowledge gaps of the educrats, as well as their misconceptions and biases.
And this trustee board of one, is an imported bureaucrat that loves rules and regulations because it forces everyone below to dance to the tune of the ministry. Would she know, that small rural schools do a much better job at achievement, despite the curriculum for students who walk to school or short bus transportation under 10 kms, compared to their urban counter parts? But the fired trustees, a few of them would know that fact, plus other advantages that relates directly to achievement for rural students. Big box schools, will destroy the advantages, and affect the outcomes of rural students to match the urban students and their schools.
After 12 years of hell getting help for my child, the LD students and their stats share a remarkable likeness between urban and rural LD students. Approximately 4 percent of LD students, will go on to post-secondary, and depending on the province, the remediation of the learning problems, it has remain steady for the past 15 years or so. Keep in mind, around 80 percent of the LD student group, fall under mild to moderate, and have the ordinary garden variety reading, writing and numeracy deficits. One would think, that an urban LD student, with all the resources, including private resources, there would be far more going to post-secondary. One just has to look at the rules, regulations that governs SE services and the ones for LD students, to see how any public education system, any school board continues to reproduced the 4 percent or lower consistently , no matter the location.
From what I have observed and read, the educrats are determined to make all schools, school boards no matter the location of the school, based on the factory model found in making widgets. Instead of widgets, it is repeating the same percentages over and over again, and if the percentages rise or fall, proceed to implement policy that will affect the percentages. The wild cards are the parents and the communities concerning their actions and behaviour. They are treated to a barrage of messages based on dogma, ideology, and sometimes outright lies.
An accurate accounting of Lunenburg’s decline is certainly not on the mayor’s radar screen when preparing again for another municipal election. One would think all is rosy in Camelot upon reading the below link to his opinion piece today.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/45334-lunenburg-building-vibrant-community-future
However, even though he is delighted there is a big box P-9 entrenched in his backyard, in reality, it has truthfully been the catalyst for out migration.
Originally it was announced for 600 – 650 students; the number will be closer to just over 500 when opened in 2012. It has accelerated declining enrollment, not prevented it. The new Bluenose Academy is also built about 10 minutes away from another P-9 in Mahone Bay. More brilliant strategy by the educrats!
Consolidation has affected the catchment area over all, not to mention the looming threat of massive school closures on the horizon. The firing of the SSRSB gives serious cause for concern here and this event will not attract families to the region for a while.
So it has not become the magnet he so believes will bring new families to bear fruit to his strategic plan.
The mayor also fails to mention the critical closure and loss of Lunenburg’s high school – students now have an obscenely long bus ride to the other side of Bridgewater; a town growing and currently building a large fitness and leisure centre. Another challenge to Lunenburg.
Besides the Lunenburg Academy, the high school was one bright spot to help the town move toward establishing new families. Now it is gone.
Another loss of the town’s social capital.
But why not let dempgraphics speak for the town.
In the last census the town lost 9.8% of its population from the census of 2001. Less that 7% are under the age of 19 years old. During the last 15 years or so there has been no evidence that the town has actively focused on the recruitment of new families. Some would say the opposite has occured. Without a highschool, the chances are slim to none for growth in that department.
Lunenburg is a clear example of the effects that centralization and poor planing can have on a town subservient to the antiquated thinking of bureaucracies.
Successive NS governments have had this centralizing mind set. All it is achieving is that it is turning rural NS into a wasteland.
In my opinion here is a more insightful assessment to counter the mayor’s view of “big box pride”.
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/45353-education-small-schools-accentuate-positive
“Society sends a strong message to students and parents about the rural way of life by arguing that education in small schools is inferior to larger schools. To receive any meaningful education, a student must be in a building with many students and teachers and have access to laboratories, playing fields and music rooms. So inferior is the education in small schools that we close the schools and require students to travel large distances, at great financial expense to taxpayers and time expense to students themselves, as they sit on buses with very little positive stimulation.”
So very true, even back in the 60s. Until we kick the city students and put them in their place when it comes to sports. They look like scared bunny rabbits or scared pussycats. But that was back in the days, when school board funded and provided transportation. A lot of things have change especially the funding part in rural schools, no matter the size, school boards, as well as the ministry, seem to think rural students needs are far less than urban students needs, and that includes sports, as well as resources for the high school courses. Traveling on the bus, only to get to first class, and share a text book, or other material, because the board only sent 5 kits out. This year for the first time in a long time, the biology students will be dissecting real frogs and other such animals in the new year. Somehow the local high school, came up with the money to provide it, an activity that was common in the 1960s and 1970s in high school biology, as well as the interesting chemistry labs, where the same materials are under lockdown mode today, and few students get to actually used, except for the ones sitting in a top urban high school, that has all the bells and whistles.
“These types of resources are so effective that they should be used in all public schools. For small rural schools, it should be a panacea, allowing students to travel short distances to local schools, supervised by teachers on site, and still have access to experts in any field. Directing resources to these types of Internet-based programs to help rural areas keep students in home communities is much better than using money to transport students out of the communities.
Better for the rural community and better for developing a positive image of rural life.”
The best part, the kids after school, can go out fishing, and other activities without being bothered with all the distractions found in urban centers.
One ought to go to rural NL, a wasteland, where centralization, the focal point is the Avalon Peninsula, St. John’s, and government who think it is okay to travel 350 to 400 km for health care, that is beyond the check the pulse and blood pressure. Today, health officials convincing the pregnant women, they are looking for the doctors, but meanwhile the ride is not that bad, it is only 3 1/2 hours away. The only thing going for rural NL, is the closure of schools is not a common event, and the powers to be, it is more cost effective to keep schools open, even if the school population is under 100. But yet the population remains steady in rural NL, and I think the centralized governments again have a percentage that is acceptable, where it is ok for population to shrink, but when it grows, government policy and funding kicks in, as well as a steady population, as I have observed in my town. Is is really poor planning, but planned rationalization taking place? Rationalization, is a word I hear being brandy about in the fishery, and I do believe it is used to rationalized government services, killing communities bit by bit when their communities start to shrink.
What a difference it makes when the SSRSB and Superintendent have the same objectives.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/viewer.php?sctn=2007/100207/news&article=4
It seems school boards can be a pawn in the educratic game when called upon.
Considering the overwhelming voter apathy I have to wonder if we Nova Scotians deserve democratic institutions.
It would seem that the only purpose of school trustees is to provide a stamp of legitimacy to the orders emanating from the DOE.
Malkin Dare has done it again! Her recent post `(Dogs in the manger?
December 22, 2011) is sure to add fuel to our current smoldering discussion on the subject of what`s wrong with the current School Trustee system.
A Tennessee teachers’ union president has proposed to restrict school board trustees to people who have worked in the education field. In a three-minute video clip, she makes the point that at election time most teachers’ unions identify sympathetic school board candidates and support them in various ways, including financial support.
Here is Malkin`s response and what she discovered:
So I asked myself – does this happen in my school board?
Sure enough, when I looked at the Waterloo Region District School Board, I found that 7 of the 10 non-acclaimed trustees had been supported by the local teachers’ unions and every single one of them had strong education and/or union ties. I would be interested to find out if this is true in other Canadian school boards.
Assuming it is the case most everywhere, you have to wonder why the Tennessee teachers’ union president wants to cut out non-educators completely. What more could the unions possibly want than they are already getting? (Malkin Dare)
Comment:
Who represents us on elected Boards of Trustees? How about a little homework over the holidays? Who are your trustees – and where do they draw most of their support?
The Michigan Education Association is taking direct action to elect more teachers to school boards. The MEA manual and video, Electing Your Employer: It`s as Easy as 1-2-3, demonstrates just how far teacher unions are prepared to go to secure control of public schools.
One shocking statement jumped out at me: `Public education is the only field where you can actually elect your employer.`
The “School Wars“ in the United States have arrived at the local level and are beginning to infest local school board elections. Teachers come first in the MEA campaign and that manual provides us with the concrete evidence of a plan to take complete control of the elections process.
We need to be vigilant and guard against such initiatives. Let`s start by examining closely the rules for eligibility for school board elections. We may need to look at measures to prevent such blatant conflict of interest practices. Local school boards in Canada are often populated by former principals and teachers — and some continue to do the bidding for the teacher unions. To my knowledge, no one has done a study of the elected boards to see how many are married to teachers, have children teaching, or work in a field doing business with the school system. It might be a job for a Provincial Auditor.
I watched the video to which Paul referred us, about the Michigan Education Association’s attempts to be politically involved at the school board level. I didn’t see anything to fear. In fact, there were a lot of lessons for all of us there.
To start, none of the teachers filmed were Principals, or as they are called in NS, School Administrators. I assume that’s because Principals, being involved in hiring, firing, discipline and career wrecking of teachers are considered management in Michigan. That’s unlike NS where Principals not only are members of the union, but have traditionally dominated and run the union.
Worrying about teachers’ unions participating openly and democratically in a school board election seems like a red herring to me. First, teachers who are employees of the school board cannot hold elected school board office in NS. Second, we would be naïve to think that other groups controlled by business and industry do not participate in the same way.
One might speculate that part of the reason for the mess in the NS education system is because of the participation of what I call the careerist element. The careerists, in my definition, are not those who become teachers because it is a calling and they wish to make a career of it, but those who make a career out of reaching for and exercising power and influence for personal satisfaction.
Inevitably these careerists find their way to the positions of Vice-Principal and Principal on their way to school board Directorships and even to Superintendents. (My apologies to those many Vice-Principals and Principals who do the job because they are good at leadership and the job is part of their vocations.)
This careerist approach also has led to the NS Teachers’ Union having been dominated by Principals, often to the serious detriment of teachers and even to the wrecking of promising teaching careers.
NS has a long history of politics being dominated by those at the top of the teaching, careerist food chain. Many provincial and municipal politicians came from the Principal class and those who weren’t Principals often had them as their campaign chairmen. This was especially the case in rural and small town NS where teachers were the best educated and Principals were the most powerful. There are still small town folk who will not oppose a stand taken by a Principal or a Superintendent for fear of how it will affect their children.
Any union has as its primary responsibility (both morally and legally) the representation and welfare of its members. The history of unions shows, however, a much broader outlook and they are regularly involved in fighting for those more vulnerable who have no organization to support them. (Find that in a business association!)
The teachers’ unions need not be ashamed of what they have done for teachers or for education generally. Imagine what it would be like had there never been a teachers’ union. Low wages, increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel for teaching candidates, high turn-over as educated teachers moved to other careers, etc. The largesse of government and business would not have considered catering to a bunch of student non-consumers a high priority.
But let’s return to the careerists in the mix. With all due respect to those Principals who do mean and act well and in the interests of students, too many Principals, careerists, have been in positions of power for too long. For the most part it is the careerist who will move out of the school and into the halls of power at school board HQ, at the D0E or in politics. It is the careerist who will ultimately stain and stamp the nature of education the system delivers.
So, you say, along with Elliott Payzant, SSRSB Chair and ex-Principal, the school board will hold the careerists accountable. Not when school boards are regularly populated by candidates who have no skills at the cut and thrust of politics (even if they are well meaning). Not when elected officials are provided with masses of written materials that are simply over their heads. Not when Superintendents and other careerists who claim to be “educators” regularly make those elected members feel inferior.
Elliott Payzant, in the article forwarded to us by Steven, had it more or less right. Whether he meant it and just burned out after he got the position, or whether it was a motherhood statement to support his election, we may never know. We do know, however, that he and the board he chaired never came close to holding the careerists or the DoE accountable (with the one exception of voting down school closures – which Mr. Payzant opposed). We know that under his leadership the board avoided asking the tough and uncomfortable questions. We know that in NS, this scenario is repeated day in and day out in every school board in the province.
I’d suggest that the greater danger to education has been and remains elected school boards. If it were not for school board staff unions imposing some sort of civility and control on elected boards, NS would be in much worse shape than it is presently.
We can look through our rose coloured glasses at the hopes for pluralistically elected school boards but the reality, by all accounts, seems to be much less than hoped for. Perhaps there is a lesson in that.
While I question much of what they do and why they do it, it is not sufficient to only blame the careerists or the educrats (much less the unions) for all the ills of the system. It is clear those elected to school boards have failed their mandates. No doubt there are many reasons for that, but they have, nonetheless, failed.
And, why not? We’re asking a bunch of elected folks, often with no qualifications for the job, to run an education system. We’re providing them guidance in the form of professional educators who might actually see the elected folks as obstacles to presenting an efficient, cost effective education system that delivers good education to our children. We’re putting in place people who, all too often, have been trained to defer to the professionals advising them.
We’re asking a bunch of often unqualified folks to run a political system with no ability to raise money (for which many of us are grateful) and which is often in active competition with the municipal and provincial political systems and their respective elected politicians. (For example, while school board politicians never campaign on municipal or provincial issues, municipal and provincial politicians regularly campaign on school board issues. I’d suggest it’s because those levels of government are paying the freight for the school boards.)
Maybe (and I stress “maybe”) we’d be better off with a range of people representing us on school boards (if we must have them). For example, a representative from the teachers in the area, a representative from the medical community in the area, a member from the municipal government(s) in the area, a student, an alumnus, a lay member, a representative from the provincial government, etc. These folks would have their respective constituencies to report to and represent, but they would be selected to put their various skills and experiences together to ensure the betterment of the community through education.
There are lots of models that might be worth exploring. However, sticking dogmatically to the view that elected bodies always bring democracy and best practices is pointless given our experience. Similarly, trying to find scapegoats such as the unions is simply avoiding the difficult questions.
Well I disagree. I think there is lots to fear.
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2008/061008/news/index033.php
“We can’t continue to tread water if we want Nova Scotia to be viewed as a leader in public education. Parents with young families are moving to other provinces where education is given a higer priority.”
former chair, Elliot Pazant
Comment: Community activists are well aware of the decrees issued by union leaders when board trustees ask uncomfortable questions. The question is how long can those trustees last in a system hindered by undemocratic objectives?
There is a great deal to fear indeed, Steven. But not from the unions. From the structure perhaps. (Maybe the Principals are still union members because so many politicians have been Principals.) From the ideology of education certainly. From those self-serving, experts, definitely. There can surely be no question that the educrats are more of a danger than the unions.
The greatest danger, however, is the public’s failure to recognize the weaknesses of an elected school board system. An elected body with no funding capacity, with no legislative capacity, with no capacity to make its own rules, and with no ability or inclination to hold accountable those who make the elected members feel important.
Elected school boards are the antithesis of democracy and, in fact, they are a sham democracy.
Elliot Payzant, Chair of the SSRSB said, “We can’t continue to tread water if we want Nova Scotia to be viewed as a leader in public education. Parents with young families are moving to other provinces where education is given a higher priority. This low per-pupil funding is an issue that has serious implications for population retention and the economy.”
Excuse me Mr. Payzant, but who says NS is a leader in public education? The superintendent! Who forces families to move to other provinces or other areas of this province by closing community schools? Elected school boards acting on the instruction of Superintendents! Who takes low per-pupil money from the province and spends it by taking more teachers out of the schools and putting them behind a desk at school board HQ? Elected school boards acting on the instruction of the expert educators! Note that the answer to everything, according to elected school boards, is more money from the province. No doubt based on the advice of the Superintendent.
Unless we are prepared to discuss and analyze the sham democracy created by elected school boards, we will continue in a myopic view of what democracy is and what it might do while our students continue to suffer through a pretense of an education system. Any discussion based on reforming the bureaucracy or the eduaucracy through democratically elected school boards is a waste of time. Chasing scapegoats is equally wasteful.
Our students are ill served by a sham democracy when what they need is a decent education. Let the government institutions of democracy be democratic, let our schools deliver education. If the provincial government, constitutionally responsible for education, fails in its job then we have the chance to hold them accountable at the ballot box. With elected school boards we can’t get anywhere near those with real power – the superintendents and educrats.
Steven; I hardly think Elliott Payzant is a credible complaint about union decrees. He, as a Pricipal, would have been a powerful force in the teachers’ union for many years. As school board Chair, he obviously had more power than the union President – he got the SSRSB elected board dismissed. He assisted other boards in mounting a phony and deceitful campaign (supported by the union leadership) against the provincial government when the government demanded that school boards be as accountable as other agencies of government for the money they received.
Mr. Payzant, as with most Superintendents and school board Chairs, is no stranger to decrees but I expect he’s not often on the receiving end of them.
Let’s also not forget that Mr. Payzant and his elected colleagues would have been responsible for the bulk of the teachers’ contract. A contract is not dictated by the union, it’s negotiated by the union and the school board. It’s simply another example of deceit for the person primarily responsible to then blame the school board’s problems on the contract allegedly dictated to him by the teachers’ union.
Mr. Payzant appears to be the master of politically correct rhetoric and of the means of avoiding responsibility of everything he says and does. He’s the champion of finding scapegoats. Yet another example of why elected boards do not work and the wastefulness of chasing scapegoats.
Ron, you are arguing the union’s position, and is often the position taken by unions, as one of their reforms. The non-elected appointee, over a wide cross section of society, for the sole purpose of consolidating power, and place limitations at the bottom via through the regulations/rules regime. The thou shall and thou shall not rules, as well as let us all pretend that all those within the education system, all have the best interests of the students and the schools that are in the communities.
As for your comment, “Any union has as its primary responsibility (both morally and legally) the representation and welfare of its members. The history of unions shows, however, a much broader outlook and they are regularly involved in fighting for those more vulnerable who have no organization to support them. (Find that in a business association!)”
I have never found in any teacher union in NA (by the way, I have read many articles over the years) to support your above premise that the union is regularly involved in fighting for those more vulnerable who have no organization to support them. You must have drank the kool-aid somewhere down the road to lead you to use it to support the premise of a non-elected board. If anything, the teachers’ unions in NA, don’t much care if the board is elected or appointed, because the real power lies behind the school board trustees, in the form of committees, where often and is usually the case, the teacher union reps always outnumbers the management staff of the board as well as the trustees. Take for example, the example of the Reading Recovery program that enjoy over 10 years presence in the Nova Scotia schools, which was initially brought to the table by the teachers on the committees, and a program developed by a careerist, who started as a teacher once upon a time. Reading Recovery helps to advance the union goals, but does little for the vulnerable students who have reading issues. and to developed good reading skills. Reading Recovery creates future jobs to take care of the future needs of the students, to accommodate their limited reading and writing skills. A 60 percent failure rate reported for Reading Recovery is acceptable in the eyes of the union and in the same way a 40 percent reading below grade level is an acceptable rate by the union brass, in outlining the union position in any of the literature that I have read.
Quite frankly, the union interests comes first, and students needs are at the bottom of the list, unless the students needs can be used to advance the goals of the unions in the acquiring of power and influence. One of the reasons, why the public education systems and the unions do not practice the form of reading intervention by the science, allowing the research to guide the reading intervention practices in our schools, is that it will not provide sufficient future jobs well into the future, and as well provide the material in future contract negotiations. The union uses their position to influence the dogma and ideology of other within the trustee board, the school board staff, and all the way up to the ministry. The last thing the union wants is an efficient operations in the business of teaching, and educating the young. The art of deception and misconceptions often influences the policies of a school board, to advance the unions’ goals and to serve their own best interests. It is in the union’s best interests to dumb down curriculum, keep struggling students to continue to struggle, and to maintain anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of students weak in the foundation of language and numeracy.
Or pointed out in this article, “In general, we know that interest groups advocate for the benefits of their members, even if it comes at the expense of others. We know that teachers unions are interest groups. And we know that the interests of teachers unions are not entirely consistent with the needs of students and taxpayers. Thus, teachers unions are likely to be negative forces for the education system and certainly should not be seen as helpful. The most rigorous research that does exist bears this out, but we also know this from our more general knowledge of how interest groups affect policy.”
http://edobserver.blogspot.com/2011/11/jay-greene-on-teacher-union-collective.html
In the paper, Getting the Fox Out of the Schoolhouse, “The public owns public education, not the union. The authors make it quite clear that government has empowered unions to act as the de facto system managers That has to stop. The public also needs to be relentless in exercising its right to hold school officials accountable for the good education of our children.”
And here: “It is time to correct the imbalance between unions’ interests and those of the public in the development and implementation of policy for school systems. It is time to enable parents and citizens to become more influential in their own right, to become a more effective counterweight to teachers’ unions.”
http://www.aims.ca/en/home/library/details.aspx/1862
And in the world of teachers’ unions, vulnerable students have their education impeded by the very unions that profess to have the best interests of students. The ideology and dogma is vital for the union, to maintain their influence and power, as well as directing policy that is more in keeping with the advancement of the union’s best interests.
Hi Ron:
“Unless we are prepared to discuss and analyze the sham democracy created by elected school boards”.
I have a problem with that statement Ron, perhaps it should have been :
“Unless we are prepared to discuss and analyze the sham democracy of elected school boards created by……………???????”
While I agree with much of what you have said, I don’t believe that school boards created themselves or the problem!
Perry; you have a point – to a point. However, there are no options. Communities and the citizens in them have no right to create boards or agencies to deliver any service whatsoever. Constitutionally that jurisdiction falls with the province. Thus, the province will create and must approve any form of service delivery in the area of its jurisdiction, including education.
If, however, the province creates a mechanism for delivery of a service, such as a school board, it then becomes important that those chosen (or elected) do their best at what they’ve been chosen to do. There has been a colossal failure of the vast majority of elected school board representatives to take on that responsibility. No doubt some were well-meaning but unable, while too many were simply preparing their own political career or basking in the light of the expert telling them what to do.
So the question now is, knowing that school boards will always be created by the province and answerable to the province, what is the alternative?
My suggestion is to look at health boards. There may be a lot to complain about in the NS health system, but the complaints are generally focused on the issues not on the bureaucracy or on the health boards or community boards that advise and oversee the health administration. In education, all we ever complain about is the board or the bureaucracy and that leaves no obstacle to the continued changes and re-organizations that act as cover for the bureaucracy.
Adults are elected to school boards, let’s start treating them as adults. Hold them responsible for what they do and for what they allow.
“If however, the province creates a mechanism for delivery…”
Referring to Dan O’Conner’s position:
“Nevertheless he clarified the NDP’s suport for the law which assigns responsibility for their decisions exclusively to the elected school board.”
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2009/060209/news/index015.php
Is this about simple delivery of service or local educational democracy?
I think that we agree on the end result, just neither of us is in agreement on how we get there. I for one would be extremely hesitant to simply throw the reins in the air.
Ron, strange phrase to be using, “antithesis of democracy ” in reference to school board trustees. A low boy on the totem pole, considering that the phase is used often in describing democratic governments, that limits the influence and power of their citizens, through limiting their rights and freedoms.
Many different definitions, but essentially restricts the rights and freedoms of the majority, in favour of control democracy, giving the outward appearance of democratic principles, masking the real purpose of control through stealth tactics over the majority, by getting the majority to voluntarily restrict their constitutional rights and freedoms, in favour of a minority to rule the hen-house and have authority over the majority.
“Democracy is based on the principle of one person, one vote. The market functions on the principle of one dollar, one vote. Consequently, under conditions of unequal economic power, a society ruled by the market is a society ruled by those who have the most money — the antithesis of democracy. ”
David Korten, economist and internationalist”
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/DemocracySociety.html
However, where ever did Ron get the idea that school trustees boards were democratic at some point? When did Ron get the idea that the educrats are solely the danger, when union reps are constantly whispering in the ears of the educrats, the issues that are the best interests of the unions, and not necessarily the best interests of the public purse? Unions and educrats, have done a very good job, in asking the majority, the public to concede their authority and best interests for their children’s education, to a handful of a few, who profess to have the best interests of their children and their education. From unions, social justice and inclusive classrooms, and from educrats, curriculum and teaching practices that allows the social justice and inclusiveness dogma to be interwoven in the fabric of curriculum and teaching practices. Partners in the crime of holding the education system in hostage to meet their ever growing list of interests of unions and educrats.
The antithesis of democracy,is the poster child for those who are looking to cast blame, to defend the status-quo of the governance of the public education system, or to justify the right of the state to have final authority over a student’s education, and to take away the constitutional rights of students, parents as well as to control the quality of education.
But Ron, to blame the public for the actions of the school board trustees, is ironic, and even more ironic when the actions of the school board trustees is a call for the elimination of the elected board, and in its replacement, appointees hand picked by the same union and educrats. Democratic? Neither are, and are both shamed democracies, because the majority has ceded their rights to a minority. The school trustee board is a creature of a democratic nations, that springs from the divisions of power and authority of governance, and more importantly to protect the legal backside of the provincial government, constitutionally and as well as the gatekeepers in control of education. By law, provincial education systems are only required to provide a desk, books, and opportunities to accessing education, and at the moment, the Supreme Court of Canada is hearing a case that may indeed turned the public education systems upside down, where they may indeed become liable and accountable for the state of public education, the quality as well as the individual students education. When 40 percents of grade 12 graduates have weak foundation skills in the 3 Rs, that requires remedial intervention as adults, there is something wrong with a system that allows the adoption of a governance system that caters to the best interests and agendas that pays no mind to the quality of education, and the billions of dollars being spent by the public, to supplement their children’s education via through private education firms, after school home tutoring, to the basics that is no longer taught in the public schools. The school trustees boards is a creature to be used as the first defense in protecting the special interests and agendas, and are mandated through the statues of the school acts, describing their responsibilities as well as to whom they are accountable to. And it is not the public, but the ministry of education they are accountable for, as well as to ensure that the union contracts are followed, and to sync in with the local policy development of the trustee boards. No matter if it goes against the local community best interests, or the best interests of students or the individual students.
If anything, the governance of the public education system is an antithesis of democracy, because it seeks authority over all things in education, and limits the options of students and parents to seek redress, as well as to provide narrowed define parameters to actively participate within the public education system, which prevent debate on all facets of education from the peanut gallery, the public. The answer is not to get rid of the elected school trustees, but to reform the governance model where accountability and authority is restructure that truly represents the best interests of the students and their education. Quite frankly, I am tired of ceding my rights as a parent concerning my children’s education, and in the end, as a parent is picking up the tab, as well as my time to supplement the education of my children for the basics that is missing, and than have the education system blame the children, the parents and any outside external variables to account for the failures of the policies that were not the public’s making, but the creation of the public education system. The elected school trustees are at the bottom of the list, devoid of authority and power and are used by the inside power brokers as the friendly scapegoat when education systems are looking to cast blame on what is just plain selfish behaviour to justify the agendas and special interests within the public education system.
There is no hard fast rules, regarding who can become a school trustee. Teachers’ unions targeted school trustee positions for the obvious reasons of protecting their best interests, but now has evolved into more than protecting their best interests, to an active process of supporting the mutual goals and objectives of a centralized governance model within the accountability, legal and responsibility framework in all things in education.
In the AIMS paper, regarding Nova Scotia, , “This systemic mismatch between authority and accountability ensures power remains centralized while
accountability remains dispersed. This leaves individuals and communities, even those individuals. serving on school boards and SACs, effectively powerless to achieve anything of value for the students
they ostensibly serve.”
Click to access YesMinister.pdf
In today’s world, the school board of trustees is a representation of a pseudo-democratic elected board, that actively works to maintain the power structure and divisions of power, and constantly shifting accountability objectives to support the power structures of a centralized governance education model. I say pseudo, because of low voter turnout, as well as centralized structure that allows the power positions within the education system, to set the conditions for the trustee boards, who can run, and more importantly, final accountability runs upward for approval of school boards’ trustees business. In a BC news clip, in 1918, a school board fails to elect a school board trustee, and the superintendent was called to appoint the trustees. Even back than, a school trustee board had limited power to effect local change, due to the school act, and the divisions of powers.
Click to access 19180525_Cariboo%20Observer.pdf
In another AIMS paper called, Getting the Fox Out of the Schoolhouse, union involvement in school trustee boards is discussed:”As such, teachers’ unions do not have fundamental responsibility for the accountability of school systems; rather, that responsibility belongs primarily to those who officially govern them. If unions have received too much at the expense of the public, then the fault lies with provincial governments, school boards, parents, and citizens. Provincial governments are responsible for the legislative and regulatory arrangements that govern school systems, including the powers and duties of school boards and the legal regime for collective bargaining. Every clause in every collective agreement has been agreed to by a school board representing citizens, including parents. If there has been a less-than-effective preservation of management rights, that is something for which school authorities,to a significant extent, are responsible. Parents and citizens, too, bear some significant responsibility for insufficiently accountable school systems when they too easily accept unions’ characterizations of what is in the best interests of the public.” http://www.aims.ca/site/media/aims/TakeBack.pdf
Unions can justified their presence on school trustee boards, and when their is a strong presence of trustees who work within the education system, or have strong connections, it is in the best interests to maintain the power and accountability systems as is, and in a strong centralization model, that maintains and limits accountability directed at the union, the work of educating students, and to maintain no responsibility except for the responsibilities outlined in the contracts.
That said, unions want the power without being held accountable and being held responsible for their actions. The unions in Canada have gladly handed the accountability and responsibility to the above levels of the education system, and in turned, all parts of the education system have agree to work for common goals and objectives, that has been mutually agreed upon in advance, to where the various and multiple agendas can be fitted in, among the interested parties. What is left out, with deliberate intent is the best interests of the students and the communities the board serves, and is buried ten feet deep under the regulatory statues, school acts, and accountability objectives that really serves the agendas within the education system.
All done in what is known as sweet viscous language, to smooth the worry brow heads of confounded parents, students and the general public.
“It is the duty of the school board to hold the system accountable.”
Elliot Payzant Chair, SSRSB
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2008/111108/news/index030.php
How times change.
Steven, known as sweet viscous language – “It is the duty of the school board to hold the system accountable. There’s lots of research that shows the best student performance occurs in boards that hold the system accountable, boards that know their constituents and boards that demand answers and solutions to hard questions.
“We as school board members are here to represent students and the public – we have to know what they want and need – and be ready to react to that … we have to take a critical, but constructive, look at all recommendations made by our administration.”
He noted much of the board’s administration is mandated by the province.
“So maybe we need to take a long look at some of the things the Department of Education has been telling us we need to do.”
Mr. Payzant said the board also needs to work increasingly more closely with all partners in education, and that it should meet regularly with municipal councils, service organizations and other community groups.
“This is an extremely critical time for public education. For the sake of our future, we have to make sure we get it right.”
Or talking out of both sides of the mouth, confounding the public, hoodwinking the public into thinking everything is OKAY. Biggest mistake, and probably got a few upset in the education of department and ministry, is letting the public know that its administration is mandated by the province. I wonder how many phone calls the ministry received from parents, bypassing the board to get problems solve, or to complain back in 2008? There is nothing more sweeter, than to have the ministry of education justify the administration of a school board of their own making, that is the root cause of a parent’s child’s low achievement or behaviour woes. The ministry gets caught in their own web, that is specifically designed to entrap parents and students to limit their behaviour and actions, to where the only action the ministry can take, is to take actions that will satisfied the parent and the child in question. To defend or not to defend, depends on the legal consequences of the actions or inactions of the parties involved, and it will dictate the ministry of education actions.
The SSRSB was really asking some interesting questions at one time. However, would those questions be asked today if all non – educators were cut out completely from the board and local democracy?
Or if there was an appointed board of one?
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/022211/news/index015.php
” In the case where a new member is appointed to fill a vacant seat, preference should be given to candidates that have previous involvement in the education system,”
Click to access SchoolBrdEffectivenessConsultationFINAL.pdf
Steven, the last two links provides the evidence that the education system has already implemented the evolution of winding down the active participation of citizens at the local school boards. What caught my eye, is the professional development and a union telling the trustees that they have no business knowing what is being spent on in professional development. No doubt to cover the wine and cheese gatherings exchanging dubious education information, and the ‘self-congratulations pats on the back, for a job well done’ get togethers with all the trappings of the luxury hotel, and expensive price tag.
“Power values professional development. “I spent a lot of time on the PD committee of the Halifax County Local,” he says. He served as vice-president of professional development on the Halifax County Local executive during the presidency of Gordon Steeves and before that John Huntley, in which the NSTU John Huntley Memorial Internship program is named. This internship program provides NSTU members with hands-on learning about the many programs and services offered by the NSTU. As part of his recognition, Power travelled to Toronto to receive his award along with 31 other outstanding principals across the country in a Gala Awards Ceremony at the Courtyard by Marriott Downtown Toronto on February 8. All of the recipients participated
in an exclusive five-day management course at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, where they gained valuable knowledge and learned strategies to help them enhance public education at their school and in their community. The program included Dr. Joe D’Cruz’s session on Co-consulting Lifelines. “This professional problem solving/sharing strategy was
developed and used over the five-day sessions in the context of a team project,” he says. Other working sessions involved Dr. Michael Fullan, which focused on change, and building capacity and the vital role of relationships play in this context. Dr. Ben Levin presented a session on Leading in a Political World and Brian Woodland, Director of Communications for Peel District School Board presented a very animated and informative session on effective communication from a school leadership perspective. Other guest speakers included Gerry McCaughey, President and CEO of CIBC and Alan MacGibbon, CEO of Deloitte. Both CIBC and Deloitte are major sponsors of the Learning Partnership. McCaughey spoke on the importance of a strong Canadian public school system that meets the needs of all learners and MacGibbon spoke to nurturing talent in your organization. “What impressed me most with these leaders was the strong sense of social responsibility and their belief in and support of the Canadian public school system.”This was, to say the least, an outstanding professional learning experience, in which I learned a great deal and will support me as a learning leader. And the great thing about all of this, it was 100 per cent Canadian!”
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20professional%20development%20funding%20in%20the%20south%20shore%20regional%20school%20board%20district%20for%202011&source=web&cd=19&ved=0CFgQFjAIOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnew.teachersplus.ca%2F%3Fservice%3Dfile%2F2173%2F1&ei=TMb4TtyyHYfw0gHn5M3zCw&usg=AFQjCNExGru_fgLS45ZoOPmKvR2N_biitQ&sig2=dNB1z-N1LQlsnJwhxbg9Cg
Having someone without the education experience is a much tougher row to hoe, when the person has to be deprogrammed and re-educated that is more in keeping with the overall goals of the public education system. After all, the trustees main job these days, is to act as a front, for the actions or inactions or both of all of the stakeholders minus parents, communities and general public. A good chunk of money goes to professional development, that is directly taken from the direct funding and delivery of education to students.
Let’s face it, there will be times when trustees question motives and spending (on behalf of the community) just as SSRSB trustee Rafuse did regarding professional development days.
The issue of school board credibility in elections, brings us back to elligibility – which brings us back to the educrats and union influence and meddling.
And here is another facet to look at, concerning the many rules of the education system, to force the social values down the collective throats of students and parents alike. In this case it is about food, but it could be anything else that requires new policy formation, to engineer the change in values that students hold as individuals and as a group, as well as the values of the parents. Another problem with school board trustees, is the willingness of eagerly jumping on the bandwagon of social engineering, and their unwillingness to dive in the quality of education being received in our public schools.
“New on the curriculum at the schools mentioned above and coming to Ontario schools is: “flouting the rules” and getting away with it. The children will learn early that dumb rules create a criminal class of entrepreneurs that operate in the shadows, a black market in junk food. Again the leviathan state does what it does best.
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” Tacitus”
http://thebrightlibertarian.blogspot.com/2011/12/psssstwanna-buy-some-potato-chips.html?spref=fb&mid=5631007
And the more hypocritical.
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2009/060209/news/index015.php
“The provincial government can not and should not try to substitute its own judgement for the decisions that are the legal responsibility of the school board.”
Dan O’Connor
. Steven, “However, according to the Education Act, school closure decisions made by school boards through the formal review process are final and may not be altered by the province through the minister.
“The elected board members from across this region are shocked with the stance taken by the NDP candidate for the Lunenburg area,” said board chairman Elliott Payzant in a May 21 correspondence to NDP leader Darrell Dexter, adding Ms Birdsall’s position is incongruent with the regulations and a violation of the role of the board.
“School closures are often an emotional issue, as well as being a complex matter,” said a response from Mr. Dexter’s chief of staff, Dan O’Connor.”
Shock, that anyone would have the gall to question statues that can be turned over by another new set of amendments, when ever the provincial government feels like it, and done in the same way as the government moved to fired the whole board of elected trustees. The statues, and the majority of them are set into law, to provide accountability and divisions of powers at the discretion of the government in power. And speaking about the roles of a school board, which are outlined in any provincial school acts, are also repeated over and over again in what the school boards are and are not, to give the appearance of school boards being the innovators and creation of policy. But in reality, the school boards have become the queen of rubber stamping and promoting the goals of the education ministry, and playing nice to all the agendas within the public education system.
At the NSSBA, ”
The following is a list of their main responsibilities:
Advocacy
Policy Creation
Planning, Goal Setting & Appraisal
Allocating Financial Resources
Communications
Hiring & Evaluating the Superintendent
Staff Development
Encouragement of Student Advisory Councils ”
http://www.nssba.ca/new/index.php?cid=15&pid=47&lang=e
Not one word on the student’s education, but lots on the operations of board, the delivery of ?????, and it is question marks since the documents and reading material meant for the public is vague language, that allows wide and fanciful interpretations regarding responsibilities and duties of school boards. The fall back position, will be the school act, and is used often to mock those who asked tough questions and are often critical of the board’s policies and actions. Nothing more delicious, when school board staff is caught trying to wriggled out of the few statues in the school act, that actually protects the public and the students, from having their limited legal rights being trampled and discarded, in favour of the agendas within the public education system.
This leads me to a rather new method, that is happening across Canada in every school board, to where the narrowing of access to education services beyond the classroom, is an unwritten goal of the stakeholders, to promote other well published goals of the inclusive classrooms, social justice and equity policies. It is the disappearance of the mild to moderate disabilities, leaving severe disabilities in place. To have a severe disability in any disorder, the child must present with 7 or more learning problems to have immediate access to SE services. For the most part, 80 percent of the identified SE population are mild to moderate, and have less than 4 learning problems, with one major one that impacts the others in various intensity. This lucky set of students, get to stay in the inclusive classroom, until they present with 7 or more learning problems that was not evident and observable in the prior years. The sixty-four dollar question is how many of the SE students in the inclusive classroom, ever received SE services after they present more than 7 learning problems? Another question to asked school boards and their trustees, who play the pivot role of the thou shall and thou shall not rules governing SE services. On the SSRSB site, a typical and common statement of LD and the absent of LD running from mild to severe across the spectrum. It also hold true for other disabilities at the board level, and is used for the expressed purpose of promoting the goals and agendas of those within the education system.
“Severe Learning Disabilities
A learning disability is a difference in brain structure that affects an individual’s ability to receive, process or express information. As a result, the individual may have difficulty learning to read, write or to do math, despite being of average to above average intelligence. Social skills can also be impacted.
Some signs commonly associated with a learning disability are:
Inconsistent school performance
Poor reading, writing, spelling or arithmetic skills
Personal disorganization
Failure on written tests, but high score on oral exams
Language problems
Difficulty following and understanding instructions, unless they are broken down into one or two tasks at a time
Poor auditory or visual short-term memory
Some of these problems can be found in all children at certain stages of development. When a child has a cluster of these symptoms which do not disappear as the child get older, you might suspect a learning disability.
The South Shore Regional School Board employes Severe Learning Disability specialists and program support workers. Consultative service is available at all grade levels for students identified as having a learning disability.”
http://www.ssrsb.ca/programs-and-services/severe-learning-disabilities.html
That says it all, that is putting the vast majority of LD kids in the inclusive classroom, without easy access to remediate the learning difficulties. As well as expanding the achievement norm of the classroom, to fit in the LD students who are not considered severe, as acceptable lower achievement standards. In effect lowering the standards of achievement for all students, and not just the LD students.
“It’s going to involve some very hard and difficult decisions in a wide range of areas – staff, buildings and transportation.”
Wade Tattrie, Director of Finance on future cuts to the SSRSB
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/122811/news/index011.php
This is the surfacing of another underlying issue leading to the next school review crisis.
Hell, they will be cutting the bone of education delivery and resources directed at the students.Why do they think closing down schools will actually reduced expenditures? Voodoo accounting, when it still cost the same amount of dollars educating the student in a school with less than 200 students as it does in a school with a population of 500 or more, plus the additional administration staff and paper work to managed a school of 500 or more. Not to mentioned the increases in bus transportation, and the costs that go with that one. No way of saving a dime, but will add on additional problems concerning school quality, environment and social atmosphere. And a spike in absent students, when the school is 20 or more kms away, and I doubt parents will run into their cars to drive little Suzie to school, especially when gas is so dear today.
An interesting watchdog.
http://www.knowyourtrustee.com/about/
Non Profit Board Governance: Leadership and Trusteeship
“Pulling in the same direction is the best way to avoid a tug-of-war.”
Jim Gunn, Education Consultant
Now that there is an appointed educrat (Judith Sullivan – Corney) local educational democracy is ebbing away; and so is any chance at credible governance. Was the “same direction” ever in the student’s best interest?
http://jamesgunn.ca/services.htm
Well Steven, you must be blowing steam from both ears. especially if Gunn is in the picture. Too bad there is not a serious group of citizens, that have the time and can commit it like the citizens in Calgary. Below is a few examples of what is on their blog.
“In November, the CBE trustees again met far more in private than in public. In total, they met for 12 hours and 54 minutes.
Public time for November: 2 hours, 54 minutes (or 22.5% of the total board meeting time)
Private time: 10 hours (or 77.5% of the total board meeting time)
We’re beginning to see a very worrying trend. August: 100% private, September: 52% private, October: 73% private, November: 77% private.”
Problem everywhere it seems.
“Public question from Julie Miller: “Why have the memorization of times tables, spelling tests and cursive writing been removed from the curriculum? Why do we have to spend so much time engaging, strategizing, feeling and speaking of initiatives? Can you explain the extreme shift from core principle education, including memorization of basic mathematics and spelling tests, to what the children are currently doing? What do you intend to do to ensure that the basics of education are not lost among the rest of the very colourful and new-age subject and discipline areas that we know have failed miserably in other countries? Where and when can parents have a say in the curriculum of their children, or is that why more and more are turning to homeschooling?” Response: We can’t control the curriculum that is put out by Alberta Education and you can give them your feedback.”
And we all know what the ministry will state, and kick it back down to the school boards. From what I have been told at the ministry, that the ministry has very little control over curriculum, and the actual curriculum is an undertaking by several departments lateral and in between levels, as well as the textbook publishers. Than I went into my speel, and asked the question with a bomb, ‘I suppose you send your own children to private tutors when they need remediation, or perhaps you do not need to worry about it, because your children go to the private school in town. It is a bomb question, and be prepared for a backlash. But the last time I used it, the person quack up laughing, if only I had that kind of money to do so. After that the conversation went my way, talking about the lack of the basics and how it has impacted my dyslexic child, and how it would benefit children as well as other children. That day I picked up a valuable contact, and ally in my war with the educrats.
“So yesterday I went to my meeting expecting to leave with a clearer understanding of RAM and the RAM document. What actually happened is the stuff of nightmares for a mother of three children, ages 7, 5 and 2, who four days before Christmas, had to spend almost seven hours in a tiny room being supervised as I was forced to copy out the 56 page document by hand. To give credit where it is due, they did provide me with a pad of paper, a pen and a glass of water. However, the CBE refused to let me take the document with me, despite multiple requests, with no explanation given as to why I could not have it. They admitted that this document was in every principal’s office and it says in the document that it is accessible to thousands of CBE employees on their Intranet. But I could only read it, take notes, and under no circumstances take it with me.”
http://www.knowyourtrustee.com/2011/12/the-cbes-christmas-present-to-me/
I put the link, because this is a story that should be read. Another trick of the board, and I have to give this parent a pat on the back, being determined like that. My little story, was orders from the school board, because I requested to see my child’s school file. I was allow to see one sheet of paper at a time, selected by the principal of his choosing, and only allowed to read it, and not allow to take any notes. I declare war inside my head, and went straight to the ministry, knowing full well that was being done was in violation of the school act, as well as legal rights that parents have regarding their children’s school files.
Perhaps when the board elections come up, people like you could run for board trustee, and that is if they actually will allow people to run without being handpicked and approved at the board and ministry level.
Perhaps a better term for the new board would have ben “Supervisor”.
http://www.ssrsb.ca/latest-news/educational-stability-in-the-south-shore-region.html
“The Slate” was a parents newsletter for the Lunenburg Academy up until recently. A few items in the June 2008 issue caught parents eyes and caused much acrimony.
The section on the SAC outlined the school review/ impact assesment meeting and the subsequent … shall we call it an adendum (Lunenburg Academy Newsletter 2), outlines the meeting after the meeting which sealed the deal.
http://www.google.ca/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=the+slate+lunenburg+2008&pbx=1&oq=the+slate+lunenburg+2008&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=1078l4203l2l5562l3l3l0l0l0l0l562l1250l2-1.0.1.1l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=a476fdc09decfa71&biw=1024&bih=564
So much for local governance.
The new wish list… a recipe for more closures.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2012/010412/news/index017.php
The Halifax Regional School Board, Nova Scotia’s largest, has just been taught an important lesson in good governance. Earlier this week, the elected HRSB members were advised that the “secret meetings” by-laws (approved 28 September 2011) had been vetoed by the Minister of Education.
Here’s how Education Minister Ramona Jennex gave them the bad news: “Department staff have encouraged the school board to explore alternatives to their proposed approach which would reduce the duplication of effort between the school board and committees of the board while maintaining the necessary transparency in conducting the work of the elected school board.”
A concerned HRM citizen filed the formal complaint, and my OpenFile Halifax expose might have exerted some influence. Yes, I’m smiling like a Cheshire cat!