The former president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association is giving her two cents on some major changes to governance within school boards in the province.
Earlier this month, the Ministry of Education unveiled the Putting Student Achievement First Act – CLICK HERE.
Included in the proposed legislation are a number of role changes for trustees.
Education Minister Paul Calandra says they will include a new CEO role in every public and Catholic board.
They will be responsible for budgets, staffing, and ensuring strong, accountable management.
There will be a chief education officer role created as well.
Calandra says trustees will continue to play a role, but the responsibilities will change significantly.
Example of changes are a salary cap, the elimination of most expenses, and boards can only have five to twelve trustees.
The Minister of Education will have the authority to make decisions on budgets, if trustees cannot agree.
The Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) will replace trustees’ associations (like OPSBA and OCSTA) as the central bargaining agent.
The province has taken over running several school boards over the last year.
“We’ve seen instances of boards inflating student enrolment to artificially balance budgets. We’ve seen trustees misuse expense accounts that erode public trust. The addition of a CEO within every board takes the responsibility for budgeting, the responsibility for management, and puts it in the hands of a CEO. Responsibility for local bargaining will shift. It will shift away from trustees to the CEOs. We will also ensure education dollars are spent where they belong.”
“I wanted to ensure that we removed the distractions that come from trustees, from the system. The new role of a trustee will be significantly reduced from what it was. Reducing their ability to disrupt the system, to cause divison in the system. I think this is a significant step forward.”
Minister Paul Calandra
Cathy Abraham is a Trustee with the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School, however, she spoke to Quinte News in her role as past president of OPSBA.
She believes that few instances of infighting or financial challenges are the excuse the province is using for these changes.
“I think that there has been a slow chipping away of powers of trustees for a number of years and that finally they felt like they had something that they could hang their hats on and say, ‘Look, this is why we have to do this.’ Trustees are human beings and sometimes on a board people don’t always see eye to eye. That is not only school boards. You will see this in municipal councils, you see this at the provincial level, at the federal level.”
“We are creatures of the provincial government, which means they can use that as a reason to make full-scale sweeping governance changes. Some of the changes they’ve made have nothing whatsoever to do with that kind of a situation. If your concern is there are issues with people not understanding governance, let’s do some training around governance and around the role of trustee if you think that for a very small number of boards, that’s the problem.”
Abraham says she has a concern that all of the challenges of being in elected office can keep a lot of quality people from becoming a trustee.
“I worry that you’re going to miss out on some really talented and good trustees because they’ve made it far more difficult to do the job. I want to just say that most trustees are there because they believe in public service, they believe in giving back to their communities. I just think that what we do in public education is incredibly important.”
