School boards in spotlight for all the wrong reasons as discord becomes public
Accusations of harassment in the workplace. Refusals to pass a balanced budget. The firing of entire boards.
School boards across the country have attracted attention over internal discord and for being at loggerheads with provincial governments. But some experts say what happens in school districts is just as common at other levels of government, albeit far less public.
In British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, board trustees have rebuffed recommendations from officials to close individual schools because of falling enrolment.
But there have been a number of examples of friction between school board members and provincial governments, including the axing of school boards in Nova Scotia over the past decade.
There was also a period where the Toronto District School Board came under fire for allegations of misspent funds and a culture of dysfunction and fear, which was outlined in a 2015 report commissioned by the Ontario government.
In B.C., six Vancouver School Board superintendents went on sick leave in recent weeks amid allegations of bullying and harassment in the workplace.
While experts tend to agree the high visibility of school board work leads to negative coverage, there is far less consensus on the reason for the discord, both between elected trustees and bureaucrats, and between boards and provinces.
Charles Ungerleider, a former deputy minister of education in British Columbia, said one source of conflict stems from school boards sometimes being treated as a “buffer” between the provincial government and individual schools.
“As locally elected politicians, school trustees often feel that they will suffer the consequences of implementing unpopular provincial policies,” Ungerleider wrote in an email.
Former Vancouver trustee Bill Bruneau went further, saying school boards are scapegoats for faltering investments in education.
“When anything goes wrong, the whipping boys and whipping girls are the school boards,” Bruneau said.
He said he wants the province to hand more powers to school boards, empowering them to have a greater say in curriculum development as well as the ability to set taxes and raise their own funds.