What would replace school boards if we ditched them?

At the risk of prolonging the debate ad nauseam, I would like to respond to Chris Eustace’s recent piece on the irrelevance of school boards (“Increasingly irrelevant school boards are clinging to the status quo,” Opinion, Feb. 16”).

I believe I can add some perspective here, as an anglophone member of a francophone school board.

Eustace was writing in response to something Marcus Tabachnick had written Feb. 10, (“The Quebec education system is not broken”). I read Tabachnick’s piece and I felt it touched on the concerns of the anglophone community in a very balanced and thoughtful way, as well as more generally demonstrating the value and usefulness of school boards.

Notwithstanding the unique position held by the anglo boards in representing a cultural community, both anglophone and francophone boards share many issues in common, not the least of which is a sadly distorted public view of their function and relevance, a public perception exemplified by Eustace’s comments.

School boards as they currently function are an excellent example of direct democracy. They are elected bodies that, despite low voter turnouts compared with federal and provincial elections, provide public access to an administrative and decisionmaking mechanism that directly affects their children’s welfare and future.

Originally designed to provide autonomous administration of schools, they have seen their independence eroded in a shameful fashion by an interfering and distant ministry of education and its regional bureaucracies.

Eustace decries the lack of action on the part of the boards with respect to ministry decisions, most notably when new school texts were introduced.

However, the fact is that franco boards have had this problem, too, although less severe than on the English side, but I know both franco and anglo boards put a lot of pressure on the ministry to resolve these problems quickly.

The fashionable opinion today that we should just do away with school boards ignores the fact that, for an administrative cost of between eight and 10 per cent of its total budget, a school board provides valuable services and I list a few:

Student transport in rural territories, a complex process that takes into account students’ special needs as well as enriched programs, and which often sees students bused far from their “home” schools to ones offering an enriched program.

The co-ordination of specialized resources such as those dealing with learning difficulties – many professionals in this area are in very short supply and must be shared by schools.

Arranging special-needs classes that take children from all parts of a school board’s territory and do wonderful work with handicapped children and kids with behavioural difficulties.

Workplace-based training that answers students’ needs for relevant education and considers what employers have to say about the sort of training required.

Implementing programs to deal with the high dropout rate in some schools – in part by focusing on specific schools and, eventually, specific students, so that strategies can be put in place to bring the rate down. Over the past eight years, such joint efforts have seen the dropout rate in our school – board district go from 39 per cent to just more than 20 per cent.

The collection of school taxes, the one function that boards could probably have performed by other agencies, especially as the ministry does not permit boards to levy taxes according to need, but rather according to very prescriptive standards set by the ministry.

I could go on and on but I won’t. I would just like to conclude by asking: What would replace school boards if we got rid of them? School principals are already so overloaded with administrative work they aren’t left with enough time to deal with the most important of their charges – the children.

The answer seems to be to create a replacement layer of bureaucracy, although this time a non-elected one where the citizen doesn’t have a school-board commissioner to call up when there is a problem.

Who’s willing to bet this new bureaucracy will cost less than 10 per cent of the total budget to administer?