Education minister backs off request for disciplinary files
Alberta’s Education minister has backed off a demand that Alberta school boards hand over a decade of disciplinary documents by Friday.
Late last month, Jeff Johnson gave Alberta’s 61 school boards nine working days to hand over documents covering a wide variety of cases from June 2004 to the present.
On Wednesday, Johnson sent a second letter to the school boards, saying the request “may not be required” given “encouraging dialogue” with Alberta Teachers’ Association President Mark Ramsankar and other ATA representatives. Instead, the letter instructs the school boards to continue collecting the information, which may be demanded at a later date, even though an agreement in principle is still possible.
“It is my sincere desire that we will make significant headway on key issues over the coming weeks, and that the information will not be required,” he said.
Since Johnson’s demand was shelved, the ATA has backed off a formal request for Alberta Information and Privacy commissioner Jill Clayton to investigate whether the request violated the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The ATA says the documents contain highly sensitive personal information and binding confidentiality agreements.
The ATA has expressed concerns Johnson was gathering information to build an argument to remove some of its disciplinary powers.
The ATA is open to discussions on how to improve the existing system, said Dennis Theobald, as- sociate executive secretary. But if Johnson decides to go ahead with his request, the ATA will go back to Clayton.
“We are always willing to speak to the minister of Education on education matters,” Theobald said.
“This is not about a trade off. We’re not going to make concessions because this information is not being requested at this point.”
Johnson cited powers under the School Act to collect the documents, which would either validate or dismiss allegations that some teacher misconduct is “falling through the cracks.”
After the request, he spoke of worrisome anecdotal reports of incompetence and unprofessional conduct not properly followed up on or reported to the ATA.
School representatives said Johnson’s request, which came just as the school year let out, would be difficult to meet given that many school-district employees had left for summer vacations.
Reached in Prince Edward Island where Johnson is meeting with other provincial education ministers, Johnson’s spokesman called Wednesday’s move a “show of good faith” following more than eight hours of talks with Ramsankar and over 50 hours with ATA representatives.
“They’ve made progress,” said Dan Powers.
“He is not interested in private personal information. He is not interested in names or dates. He is not interested in revisiting these decisions, with the one caveat that unless there was some glaring example of a decision that was inappropriate.”