High time to clean house
The provincial report into the York Region District School Board makes for shocking reading. This is Ontario’s third-largest school board, responsible for the education of more than 123,000 young people. And according to the report, its leadership is utterly unsuited to the task.
The report’s authors stop short of actually calling for wholesale change at the top of the board. Instead they make a series of 26 recommendations, including a “360 assessment” of York’s controversial director of education, J. Philip Parappally.
But it’s clear where this must go: It beggars belief that someone who presided over such a mess could continue in his position. Education Minister Mitzie Hunter is right to send the board a blunt warning that unless it makes profound changes immediately, she may take “further action” to bring it into line.
Where to start with this report, authored at Hunter’s request by education experts Patrick Case and Suzanne Herbert?
They conclude that the board’s 12 trustees “failed to demonstrate a basic understanding of their role and responsibilities as elected leaders.” There was a “complete absence among board members of any appreciation of their obligation to take a strong and unequivocal stand against racism and intolerance” at the board.
Further, say the investigators, the trustees were oblivious to the public backlash that followed revelations about their spending tens of thousands of dollars on international travel. “We found the lack of concern over the public reaction to their travel expenditures quite astounding,” they write.
And the trustees’ decision to give Parappally a 10-year contract, unheard-of in Ontario education, showed a “gross disregard for prevailing practices . . . as well as principles of good governance.”
It gets worse. Trustees were consumed by “personal clashes” and showed a lack of “strong and ethical leadership.”
Senior staff were “operating in a culture of distrust” and a “fearful and threatening environment.”
The investigators found that “a significant number of those who met with us were in tears.” And when it comes to Parappally himself, they write, “we do not see evidence of the strong, principled relationships that are to be expected of a director of education.”
This is a portrait of an organization in crisis. No wonder the minister described herself on Tuesday as “deeply concerned.”
The York board is rushing to mend its ways. Even before the report was made public, the board announced a series of measures it is taking, including a moratorium on international travel for trustees and staff; a “tough, arm’s-length trustee assessment plan”; and development of a “full equity plan.”
The minister quite rightly insists that the board go further, specifically by completing an independent assessment of Parappally’s performance by the end of May. Unless there’s a very big surprise on the way, that should lead at the very least to a new education director in York Region.
It’s harder to know what to do with the trustees. As elected officials, they cannot be simply dismissed. But it’s clear that, as a group, they have badly failed those they are supposed to be serving — students, parents, and their entire community. Their reckoning will come when they next face voters.
The best they can do in the meantime is focus on implementing the recommendations of the report without delay. If they stumble in that task, the minister should step in immediately.
The provincial report into the York Region District School Board makes for shocking reading and must lead to a change in leadership