School board trustees: a loyal opposition

Eight years of government cutbacks provided Education Minister Paul Calandra with a useful financial crisis- one he figured he would exploit by appointing supervisors for eight school boards. This enabled him to keep local parents away from decisions concerning increased class sizes, slashing programmes like outdoor education, cutting teachers and other board staff, reducing equity departments – the list is long.

Now, The Trillium reports, Rohit Gupta, the TDSB supervisor, met with members of the Board’s $20 billion real estate corporation far more than parents’ groups, more than special education advocates – more than anyone else with a stake in the education of Toronto kids.

To make matters worse, Calandra can now decide whether school boards may purchase land for new schools. His keen interest in school boards’ lands raises serious questions about a government embroiled in two scandals concerning favours to developer friends and Tory party donors. The government that brought us the Highway 413 and Greenbelt scandals should never be trusted around disposition of public lands.

It makes the loss of trustees and the oversight power they used to have more troubling. Look at the situation parents and students face across the province: a maximum of 12 trustees paid $10 000 per year answering to a CEO who may overturn their decisions.

Trustees have too many constituents to effectively address specific parent concerns or the needs of a particular school. It’s harder than ever to raise public awareness to improve conditions for low-income kids through programmes like Model Schools. The days of working “collaboratively” with board staff are past; senior staff will answer to the CEO, not the trustees.

But as we wrote earlier, trustees CAN become an opposition loyal to the people who rely on public schools. The role of opposition in government has gone downhill over the years but there still is a legitimate basis for it. That trustees spend time and money to run for office is an act of defiance against a right-wing government that doesn’t want them there. Defiance is a good start.

Once in the boardroom, trustees can exercise their opposition power to ask questions – lots of them. At the TDSB, questions remain about cuts to outdoor education programmes, increased caps on class sizes, reduced support for special education students, closing distribution centres, eliminating hundreds of staff positions and, of course, what is going on with the corporation that handles the Board’s valuable real estate.

As opposition members, trustees need to ask about the TDSB’s mission and values:

“…to enable all students to reach high levels of achievement and well-being and to acquire the knowledge, skills and values they need to become responsible, contributing members of a democratic and sustainable society.”

Does this statement make any sense given the conditions imposed by the Ford government over the years? This question could serve as grist for an excellent debate if and when the Board meets again. Such a debate could lead to significant proposals from trustees aimed at restoring what has been lost. Surely, for “all students to reach high levels of achievement” there must be class size caps that previous trustees believed necessary to enable success; surely there must be commensurate staff available to ensure those with special needs have them met; surely schools that support the Board’s most vulnerable young people should not be left to die. For kids “to become responsible, contributing members of a democratic and sustainable society” they need outdoor education, heritage programmes, music and -most important- the experience of seeing their schools run under the banner of democracy and negotiation, not dictatorship.

The TDSB’s government-appointed CEO, Camillo Cipriano, may ignore questions like these; they have no place in any budget he will develop. That’s not important. What is important is that fundamental ideals supporting a decent education are not erased from memory. A trustee opposition can see to it that the public doesn’t forget.