Go ahead and abolish school board elections, committees say
QUEBEC As the Quebec English School Boards Association prepares to wage a battle over Quebec’s plan to abolish school board elections, some English parent representatives are making it clear they oppose that fight.
Pietro Mercuri, chairperson of the central parents’ committee at the English Montreal School Board, wrote to Education Minister François Blais encouraging him to shake up the school governance system and abolish school board elections.
“I have the chance to speak to a lot of parents in many different schools,” Mercuri wrote in a letter to Blais earlier this month. “Many of the people that I have met find that the current model of governance is inadequate and does not respond to the needs of the parents who are choosing to send their children to public schools.
“The current model of universal suffrage has resulted in the election of school commissioners who are out of touch with what goes on in a classroom and who make decisions that are not always in line with the needs of the children and their parents. Some of the recently elected commissioners at the EMSB don’t have children in public school. Some of them don’t even have children!” Mercuri wrote.
Last week, the Quebec English School Boards Association said abolishing school board elections would destroy school democracy.
“If we lose the right to vote for elected officials, then we lose our local right of governance, and appointing people by the minister or electoral colleges, it means those people will be reporting more directly to the minister. Can you see them saying, ‘No, we don’t agree with this?’ I don’t think so,” argued David D’Aoust, the association’s president. He added: “Let the battle begin.” Blais promised to do away with school board elections after the government spent $20 million on elections last November in which nearlyfivepercentoffrancophones and 17 per cent of anglophones participated. Blais said he will table a bill this fall to change the structure and governance of school boards.
Luc Horne, cofounder of the group Citizens for Democratic & Autonomous Schools, which counts six members and favours getting rid of school board elections, said he was especially incensed at seeing D’Aoust refer to an upcoming “battle”. Horne suggested QESBA executives are looking to save their jobs.
“Mr. D’Aoust let’s be clear, you have not consulted taxpayers, you have not been elected to represent taxpayers and you certainly do not have anyone’s approval or consent, especially that of the anglophone community, to go “into battle” against our democratically elected representatives at the National Assembly.”
Horne said parents should be able to elect their representatives at the school level, for example at general assemblies, under existing governing board procedures.
“I don’t think you can get more universal suffrage than that,” he said.
Both the EMSB and the Eastern Townships School Board’s central parents’ committees have recently argued that it’s possible to abolish school board elections and still respect the anglophone minority’s constitutional right to manage its own schools.
Andrew Ross, a parent commissioner at the EMSB, said in an interview that painting the restructuring of school board elections as an attack on English-language minority rights and a language issue is irresponsible.
“By increasing the number of parent representatives involved directly in school board governance, you’re actually going to be cementing English control over their institutions, because the parents who send their kids to English schools, we have to get certified, we have to earn English eligibility certificates in order to send our kids there. We are as close to card-carrying members of the English community as you can get. So you’re guaranteeing in that case, by having a very strong parent representation, that you are maintaining English-language control over their institutions.”
“Of course any time there is division in the community, it’s not good,” Ross said. “But let’s try to weigh what’s more important. Is it more important to be able to have the success of our children in our schools, or to have a discussion about changing representation?”
On Tuesday, the EMSB’s central parents’ committee released results from a parent opinion survey that showed a vast majority do not believe commissioners value their opinion. The survey also found that 92 per cent of respondents want parent commissioners to have full voting privileges at the council of commissioners, which oversees board operations. Ross said the results showed a disillusionment among parents.
It is a few parents expressing dissent, responded Kimberley Hamilton from the QESBA, arguing the provincial English Parents’ Committee Association has publicly endorsed the Jennings report.
Marlene Jennings, a former member of parliament, released a report Wednesday which concluded that the Quebec government is constitutionally obliged to keep English school board elections, but could lower costs of the elections by allowing people to vote online, by mail or phone.
Blais said he completely disagreed with the report’s conclusions.