Education Reform Act stifles dissent, diversity
A look into the actual text of Bill 72
Two words in Bill 72, the Education Reform Act, hint at the ideology behind this sweeping bill. Those words are “corporation sole.”
The implied ideology is one of top-down regimentation: A “unified” system should not leave much place for public deliberation, dissent or diverse approaches.
In the proposed legislation, each school board will be replaced by an “education entity,” to be known as a “regional centre for education.” Each regional centre will still be a body corporate, but it will now be a “corporation sole”: The education corporation for Cape BretonVictoria and every other region will have only a sole member, the minister of education.
“Corporation sole” is a term found most commonly in civil laws to incorporate the dioceses of top-down churches. Bishops were worried that lay people might claim a direct stake in supervising clergy or properties. So the bishops asked politicians to make them corporations sole, as if they were the only member of the diocese. The bishops were authorized to decide and dispose without formal debate or scrutiny by parishioners.
Under this Education Reform Act, when it comes to, say, closing a school, no deliberation or voting will be required. The corporation sole can just do it. In practice, that will mean the decision will fall on the desk of the regional executive director (the new name for superintendent), who will be chosen by the minister.
Closing schools is not a random example; more such closures might now arise. That’s because principals will not be permitted to spend more than half their time teaching. The sole decision-maker will thus be tempted to consolidate small schools that find themselves no longer allowed to assign a parttime principal.
This bill removes independent scrutiny and public deliberation from the system. The government is even prepared to spend public money to make sure potential dissidents go away quietly. It’s dismissing all school board members as of April 1, but paying them to do nothing up to October 2020.
Consultant Avis Glaze recommended that the school boards be partly replaced by an armslength education ombudsman. That is not in this bill.
Furthermore, the government says that elected Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian board members will be replaced by bureaucrats at the executive director level. But, again, independent voices will be lost because these public servants can only raise their concerns confidentially.
The bill states that school advisory councils “may” be constituted, but their duties and composition will be spelled out by some future regulations. These regulations will not come back to the House for debate; they will be approved behind closed doors.
Nor does the bill contain Glaze’s suggested five-year review to determine if elected boards should come back in some form. Let’s recall that boards were reinstated in New Brunswick, which had experimented with eliminating them.
Even New Brunswick’s centralized system of the late 1990s was less top-down than what the Nova Scotia government now wants. Regional parent councils in New Brunswick could pick who served on the provincial advisory council on education. Nova Scotia’s provincial advisory council will be hand-picked by the government for two-year terms (renewable once). The advisory council will not elect its own chair. The minister will make that appointment too.
The heavy-handed way this bill is being pushed through the House does not bode well for the future oversight of schools.
Premier Stephen McNeil wants to get Royal Assent this week. But this complex bill was introduced only last Thursday. There is no time for proper hearings, research and legal analysis. There is barely time to read and understand the bill.
Education Minister Zach Churchill’s roadshow last month to sell reforms does not replace the constitutional duty of the legislature to scrutinize actual bills clause by clause. The bill’s draft text was not available when the minister was on the road, nor did we know how the government would depart from Glaze’s recommendations (which it has).
Sadly, government websites no longer even try to preserve the form and formalities of the legislative process. The changes are discussed as if they’re already done. So much for our elected MLAs.
This government is obviously not comfortable with the democratic heritage of Nova Scotia. As a citizen, I am very concerned.
“The education corporation for Cape Breton-Victoria and every other region will have only a sole member, the minister of education.”