The dialogue is open, but the matter is closed

Churchill hopes he can head off disruption by continuing to talk with teachers

The province underestimated the opposition to its plan for education, Zach Churchill admitted in an interview this week.

But the education minister seems convinced that was the government’s only miscalculation, so it is moving ahead with fundamental changes to school administration. Those changes promise a raucous spring at the Nova Scotia legislature and could disrupt another school year for Nova Scotian kids.

Churchill is travelling the province to talk about the plan with teachers, principals, parents, “even protestors,” and characterized the discussions as frank, open, tough and productive.

Just how productive is a matter of perspective, given the government has already made the decisions and is now explaining them to the people affected. The minister’s tour comes as teacher dissatisfaction with the plan grows, taking parents’ apprehensions with it.

“The first week (following the province’s wholesale, immediate adoption of Avis Glaze’s recommendations) was positive,” he said, adding the mood shifted as the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (NSTU) mobilized, and uncertainty rippled through the system and spread beyond.

Churchill and the government insist the radical redesign of school administration, along with other measures, will improve students’ academic prospects, and he tries to bridge the leap of logic required to connect some of the changes to better education.

How, for example, does removing principals and vice principals from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union help Johnny learn to read?

It is a somewhat tortured trail, but the minister takes the question back to what he views as a shift in education’s power structure that will make teachers and schools the nexus of critical decision-making about what is best for their students.

Something about that environment requires greater freedom for the school’s administrative leaders to focus on the school, without fear of conflicting union allegiances.

Churchill describes a system where teachers are empowered to choose course materials and decide other aspects of students’ learning, while principals make school-related decisions with relative autonomy.

“The (Glaze) report challenges us to give power to teachers and principals,” Churchill says.

Some principals have expressed concern about being conflicted by their union membership. They have a year to decide whether they want to remain administrators and leave the union or return to teaching and stay in the NSTU.

The dissolution of the province’s English language school boards and removal of school administrators from the union have drawn most of the attention, but they are just two of the 22 recommendations Glaze made and the province plans to enact.

The province is also engaged in a process designed to improve classroom conditions, promises to free teachers to teach by removing bureaucratic burdens and will soon unveil an inclusion policy that Churchill says will take pressure off teachers by providing additional resources to help kids with special needs.

Together, with a pre-primary program that the government hopes to extend to all parts of the province, Churchill says transformative change is well underway.

The NSTU has taken the extraordinary action of asking its members for a strike mandate to protest the administrative plan. A strike would be illegal given teachers have a contract, albeit a contract imposed by legislation, not agreed to through negotiation.

Last year, teachers worked to rule to back their contract demands, but the province didn’t budge. Any job action this year would disrupt school activities for Nova Scotian kids in successive years.

Churchill acknowledges the risk but says his is a long view.

“My mandate is to achieve a higher level of (student) success,” he says. The government will proceed with its plan, and Churchill hopes he can head off disruption by continuing to talk with teachers.

But for kids, two years is a long view. Last year, a high school student may have missed a season of basketball, an opportunity for a school trip, or the school musical. Uncertainty again this year threatens to devalue two-thirds of that student’s high school experience, and those are experiences that come once in a lifetime.

The government needs to understand that its autocratic approach has very real, immediate and negative consequences here and now.

Churchill’s motives seem pure, but once again Stephen McNeil’s government is imposing prescriptive measures absent support from a critical player in the game, in this case, Nova Scotian teachers, or at least the NSTU.

The minister’s “open dialogue” with teachers is open on everything but the conclusion.

“My mandate is to achieve a higher level of (student) success.”