Don’t dismantle school boards

Re: “CAQ’s plan respects English education rights” (Opinion, May 3)

Once again a political party is pretending to empower individual schools and parents by proposing to take power from the school boards. Fool’s gold.

Parent power is only apparent power. The emasculation of school boards is a divide and conquer strategy that would leave English-speaking Quebecers without a collective voice in the education of their children. Don’t go there. Howard Greenfield, Montreal

With voter turnout in the single-digit range (for French boards) and less than 20 per cent for English elections, it is clear that general citizen interest is non-existent.

Furthermore, with approximately half of commissioners and chairs acclaimed with nary a competition, school board commissioners arguably are more accountable to the narrow slice who bothered to exercise a vote than to the larger communities.

The postponement of school board elections from 2018 until 2020 will not impact one iota what transpires in classrooms. With all meaningful educational decisions enforced by Quebec City, school boards occupy the fringe of the educational landscape with no practical impact on the classroom learning climate.

If we are stuck with school boards due to constitutional requirements, then voting must be combined with municipal elections where greater voter numbers may allow for a more representative sampling. Furthermore, the number of English boards must be reduced by half so as to perhaps make commissioners more accountable to a larger electorate.

Jon Bradley, Beaconsfield