Why do we not trust school trustees?
Trustees are the “accountability link” between school boards and the community, says former Ontario education minister Dave Cooke. If they aren’t prepared to speak to the media, which represents the public, it reinforces the idea that they don’t understand their role, he adds.
Cooke, who served as education minister in Bob Rae’s NDP government and is a former Windsor school trustee, said trustees across Ontario seem to be struggling with “what they really exist for.”
Amendments brought in by the Liberal government while Kathleen Wynne was education minister, he said, were meant to clarify and strengthen the role of trustees, but most have never taken on that responsibility.
Passive and silent trustees are a symptom of a power vacuum that board administration often moves in to fill, Cooke said.
School board communications policies have become issues across the country, with some saying they have been explicitly told not to speak to the media. In Ottawa, Catholic board trustees were unavailable to speak to the Citizen about the controversy that erupted when the principal of a Catholic elementary school vetoed a planned Grade 6 project on gay rights.
The board’s policy is that the board chair or director speaks to the media, although only the board’s director and none of the publicly elected trustees was made available to speak to reporters. The board’s head of communications said individual trustees could speak to members of the public, just not to the media.
The province, meanwhile, has appointed a consultant to investigate the Toronto District School Board after questions about accountability and transparency resulting in what has been called a toxic relationship between the director and trustees. Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals said the board has been plagued with “confrontation, obfuscation and a lack of communication.”
The transparency issues have some questioning whether trustees who won’t speak publicly about their views and whose statements come from administrative communications staff serve any purpose.
There has even been talk that governance of school boards has to change, said Cooke, with some suggesting the creation of hybrid school boards, with some elected trustees and others who are appointed.
Meanwhile, he said, any board of directors, whether a corporate board or school trustees, “should be looking at objectives and holding the CEO’s feet to the fire.”
If that doesn’t happen, he said, “the public loses and they don’t know why they should vote for the school board.”
Changes to the Education Act introduced in 2009 were aimed at strengthening school board governance. Under the Act, trustees are mandated to monitor the performance of their board’s director of education, promote student achievement and well-being, and communicate board decisions to members of the community, among other things.
Cooke said part of the role should be to oversee an annual update presented by board administration showing quality indicators and plans for improvement. Cooke said such a report could be a “state of education in the community” report. Trustees’ roles would be to help the community understand the measures and hold the administration to those quality standards. But it is something most boards have not taken up, he said.