School board member speaks out
Once upon a time there was a local voice in education. It was called “elected school boards.” Is this how history will look back at this time in education in Nova Scotia?
Last year, the provincial government hired consultant Dr. Avis Glaze to examine our education system and suggest changes. She travelled throughout the province and spoke with local school boards on how to improve the system.
She sat down with the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board and listened to our concerns. We poured out our hearts. She wanted us to know that “she had great respect for school boards” and complimented our board on our struggles during very difficult financial times due to the decline student enrolment and schools that were under capacity.
Glaze seemed to understand that we have a high poverty rate in Cape Breton which presented its own unique challenges and we sensed empathy in her tone.
The Raising the Bar report has many good recommendations. The report recommends that a multiyear capital funding process be put in place. It is difficult to plan when we don’t know if we are in the lineup for new school construction in the next two years or the next 10 years and our school communities are waiting for answers.
Now the Raising the Bar report recommends it and it is suddenly a great idea. No wonder I feel like banging my head against a brick wall.
The report also recommends that the local voice of school boards be replaced by beefed-up school advisory councils in all our schools. Parents of young children are so busy in the evenings and schools are often struggling to get attendance at meetings now.
School Advisory Councils will have the concerns of their individual schools on their agenda. Who will be looking after the bigger picture?
The French language board will continue only due to the fact that the government can’t get rid of them because they have a charter protecting their rights. This school board will be allowed to continue to work on closing the achievement gap for the French students. One group will have the mechanism in place to examine the achievement gap. Not so for the rest of the province.
The main impetus for changing the system seems to be the low assessment scores. The report commented that the public doesn’t trust the Department enough to deliver the student-outcome data but then recommends that everything else should be placed under their control.
On a personal note, I joined the school board because I have a life-long interest in education and children. Each week I look across the table at a dedicated group of school board members who are there because they want the best education possible for our children.
The meetings are long and the decisions are tough because we are dealing with the lives of others. When we have to turn down requests from parent groups due to financial restraints, it isn’t a decision that is easy. The money can only go so far.
Besides regular board meetings, each board member sits on various committees. I sit on an Assessment Committee. We meet on a regular basis to examine the achievement scores of our students and then we decide how to best allocate our financial resources to improve the situation. School board members also work with Central Office staff to make sure that all our students are achieving to the best of their ability.
There are no board members sitting around that table for the stipend. If we were doing it for the financial gain it would be a lot less stressful to get a job as a greeter at a local retail store.
On a regular basis, we help parents navigate the system, listen to their concerns and do our best to make the system better for our students.
A few years ago, this same government thought it would be a good idea to create a Provincial Health Authority. How’s that working for us in Cape Breton? Is this what will happen to education? Yvonne Kennedy Homeville (Soon-to-be-fired school board member)