NDP won’t strip boards of powers, Eggen says
Moves by Eastern Canada provinces to dissolve or strip powers from locally elected school boards won’t happen in Alberta under an NDP government, Education Minister David Eggen said Tuesday.
“I’ve seen a disturbing trend across the country,” Eggen told Alberta school trustees assembled in Edmonton for the Alberta School Boards’ Association’s fall general meeting.
Ministers from across the country at a July meeting, including Nova Scotia’s education minister Zach Churchill, were “bragging” about “how he was taking it to school boards and dissolving them and centralizing the power. That is not happening here in the province of Alberta, I can tell you that,” Eggen said.
In March, the Nova Scotia government dissolved its seven elected, English-language school boards and appointed an advisory council to oversee schools across that province.
That followed Newfoundland and Labrador’s amalgamation of English school boards, and Prince Edward Island’s elimination of boards. New Brunswick also dissolved school boards, then later created elected “district education councils,” which have fewer powers than their predecessors.
The newly elected Coalition Avenir Quebec government has also pledged to abolish school boards.
On Tuesday, Eggen told trustees to support the NDP in the provincial election expected next spring if they value locally elected school boards. Some people think amalgamation would be an easy way to save money, he said.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “We know that having local decisions on the ground actually makes life better for kids and makes life better for Alberta families today.”
The Alberta School Boards’ Association (ASBA) is working to stave off the existential threat. Last spring, it budgeted $2 million for a “wind-down fund” to cover three months of operating costs and legal obligations, should Alberta school boards cease to exist.
ASBA vice-president Trina Boymook told trustees Monday it is surveying school boards for information to help bolster its case to the public about the importance of locally elected boards.
Nova Scotia trustees told their colleagues they failed to stop the changes by lobbying MLAs and government, not citizens, Boymook said.
“What we’ve seen in Saskatchewan, when they had that very same conversation there, it was the public who put a stop to disbanding of school boards,” Boymook said. “And they have never heard a voice so loud as the one in that particular issue.”
Public outcry prompted the Saskatchewan Party government to abandon a proposal to amalgamate that province’s public school boards while leaving Catholic boards untouched.
“That is what is going to protect us going into the future, is that our community sees the value and the benefit of locally elected school boards,” Boymook said.
Christine Myatt, United Conservative Party caucus spokeswoman, said in a Tuesday email the UCP has no plans to eliminate school boards.
At the UCP annual general meeting, members passed a policy declaration “affirming, maintaining and protecting the existence and role of local, democratically elected school boards,” she said.
“Elected school boards are a legitimate level of government, and play an important role in providing local representation,” she wrote.