Public weighs in on fixing the school board
New panel appointed by Queen’s Park holds first of 20 open consultations
Some called for school trustees to be appointed rather than elected — “it’s not a popularity contest!” — while others argued trustees should not only be elected, but paid full-time and have their staff assistants back, as the public had its first say Monday night before a panel on how to fix the Toronto District School Board.
Some 40 people gathered at the first public consultation held by a new panel appointed by Queen’s Park to see whether the TDSB is too big, or needs a better system of governance.
About half those who attended the session at the North Toronto Memorial Community Centre were current trustees, former trustees or members of the communications company hired to run 20 public consultations for the seven-member panel, under former Toronto mayor Barbara Hall.
The panel will hold consultations across the city until May 30, with the group’s final recommendations due in summer.
Rather than a town-hall, openmike format for gathering input, the panel chose small-table discussions with hired facilitators, who then gather the top ideas from each group via Post-it notes.
Hall, the panel chair, said the group feared an open-mike format could have allowed people to stray beyond the panel’s mandate and also might have intimidated those afraid of speaking out — especially staff.
“Some staff have told us they’re fearful of repercussions if they speak out publicly, which is worrisome, so we’re also inviting trustees and staff to meet with us personally,” said Hall.
After about two hours of discussions, Hall said many of the suggestions were calls for better communication “of every kind, by trustees to the community and from the rest of the board too; more personal communication and more timely.”
As for whether the TDSB is too big, Hall said some praised the “economies of scale, access to a huge talented teaching pool and the opportunity to have a variety of programming and interesting, specialized schools for the arts, for gifted etc.”
Some felt a large board needs more trustees and more funding, and more clarity about how the board functions. However, one group of parents concerned about the poor state of school buildings said the panel is simply a distraction from the real problem of underfunding.
“I feel like size is a complete red herring to the real problem of $3 billion in outstanding repairs and maintenance, but it lets the province keep its narrative of placing blame on TDSB trustees,” said Krysta Wylie, founder of Fix Our Schools, a network of parents who want the province to bolster funding for school construction and repairs
“If we start slicing and dicing the TDSB into smaller parts, that will become the focus and students will still have to go to schools in a horrible state of disrepair.”
The panel’s goal is to gather public input into what Education Minister Liz Sandals has called a search for a “more effective governance structure” of the beleaguered TDSB.
An investigation last year by veteran educator Margaret Wilson cited concerns some trustees were meddling with the daily operation of their schools — although some offenders were not re-elected — and that some employees felt they were working in a “culture of fear.” Sandals demanded a number of policy changes that addressed Wilson’s concerns; changes that trustees and staff accomplished within 29 days.
She appointed a new panel in March to consult the public as to whether trustees are too concerned with their own wards rather than all the board’s 232,000 students, whether the board does enough outreach into marginalized communities and whether the board is simply too big.