An easy solution to school board strife

Re: Re: School trustee squabbles don’t tell the whole story — Sept. 6

We shouldn’t be so quick to pass off what’s happening with trustees at the Waterloo Region District School Board. These ‘squabbles,’ as they have been called, have been going on for years and are nothing new.

Board chair Scott McMillan, with all due respect, is basically a rookie when compared to the “old guard” trustees from Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge who have decades between them. It is the old guard who cannot get along. They are the ones who continually show up in the media and are the subjects (and instigators) of the investigations or allegations because they can’t play nice together anymore.

It’s easy to say that the ongoing strife between trustees doesn’t impact the job they do. But that’s not true. To make any real, positive, and effective decisions school trustees need to work together — like any board of directors, committee, or council does — not against one another.

I’m sure Mr. McMillan didn’t mean it to come across this way, but reading his thoughts on this issue, it makes me think he’s making a case for getting rid of school trustees altogether.

Three brand new trustees were elected in 2014 and they aren’t the cause of the strife. However, the solution to the strife is easy, and it’s the voters who can finally solve it. Hopefully, they will next year.

David Kuhn Kitchener