Students need the adults in charge of their futures to have a larger vision

Re: Lack of co-operation between boards a hurdle for student athlete — Feb. 24

Reading about the difficulty for a local student to obtain a brief assessment from her teacher as part of her application to move from one local school board to the other reminds me of much of what I found difficult with the public education process in my years as a teacher. The focus here is on the teacher and on the strife between public and religious school boards and not at all where it belongs: on the student.

Nick Manning, spokesperson for the Waterloo Region District School Board, justifies this approach saying, “Cross-board collaboration adds a layer of complexity that we don’t believe is needed.”

Needed? By whom? Manning is saying boards and teachers don’t need this complexity, they don’t need this aggravation, they don’t need one more single-page assessment to complete in their busy lives teaching students. Well, try caring for students, caring for their future beyond your classroom, school and board. It’s the students who don’t need this cross-board lack of collaboration. It’s the students who need the adults in charge of their futures to have a larger vision.

What Manning said, in effect, is that lack of caring and vision begins at the board level and seeps down into every school and classroom until individual students are affected. Yet educators still post in their classrooms (and Olympic athletes demonstrate) that it’s attitude which makes the greatest difference in the long run.

Choose a better attitude, WRDSB.

Murray Charters

Kitchener