Catholic trustee reprimanded for online comment
The Edmonton Catholic school board chairwoman reprimanded a fellow trustee Tuesday for speaking out against the board’s move to extend the district superintendent’s contract.
Chairwoman Laura Thibert said trustee Patricia Grell violated “several” board policies when she posted on a blog and told media outlets she disagreed with the board’s split decision to extend Joan Carr’s contract until August 2018.
“In doing so, trustee Grell diminished the reputation not only of the board and district, but also of superintendent Carr and other staff members,” Thibert said, reading from a prepared statement at Tuesday’s board meeting.
The board’s code of conduct says trustees will “support the decision of the board corporate on any matter regardless of the trustee’s personal position on the issue.”
The board’s governing model policy also says: “The board is a governing body that speaks with one voice.”
Thibert said other trustees have also breached board policies and that the board was looking into those breaches. She wouldn’t name them.
In an interview after the meeting, Grell called the reprimand “ironic” — the board violated its organizational bylaws by chastising her in public without bringing the problem to her first, she said.
Grell said she doesn’t think she violated board policies when she questioned the value of Carr’s $430,000 contract, and queried whether trustee Larry Kowalczyk should recuse himself from voting on Carr’s contract. Kowalczyk’s wife, Eugenia, is the principal of St. Thomas More junior high school, and directly reports to Carr, Grell had argued.
“We don’t have a policy that says you can’t explain why you said the things you said at a board meeting,” Grell said.
Grell believes the board failed to properly handle the conflict of interest issue, which compelled her to speak out.
She also questioned where the “board speaks with one voice” policy comes from, and whether it makes sense for elected officials. City councillors can express their opinions publicly after council votes on an issue, she said.
Thibert told reporters the “speaking with one voice” rule is still relevant. School board trustees are not government, but a governing body, and can’t be directly compared to MLAs or city councillors, she said.
A parent group, Albertan Par- ents for Unbiased Public Inclusive Learning, is calling on Education Minister David Eggen to refuse to approve the one-year extension of Carr’s contract in the name of austerity.
Trustee Marilyn Bergstra made a motion Tuesday to lobby the Alberta government to change the wording of the not-yet-proclaimed Education Act to more clearly spell out perceived and actual conflicts of interest for school trustees.
It’s an issue that has implications for other school boards across the province, Bergstra said.
Some trustees argued the proposal was a slippery slope that might make any trustee related to a school district employee unable to vote on many issues.
The board defeated her motion.