CBC on school board issue
The CBC notices the possibly noncoincidental timing of an investigation into the EMSB with the CAQ’s intention to abolish school boards. But it doesn’t go a step further and ask how the CSDM can be moving its 766 employees for 20 years at the cost of $100 million, as announced this week. If it’s time to abolish boards, why allow this plan to proceed?
If the CAQ were to abruptly end all boards and dismiss all those people, who would administer education here above the individual school level? The government would still need fonctionnaires for at least some part of that work, so the CSDM must feel confident that its functions will still go on under another name – while the English boards may cease to exist.
Ephraim 10:11 on 2019-01-18 Permalink
Kate, having seen some of the corruption within the school boards on a first hand basis, I’m still surprised that they exist today. Some of the school boards are well run. Some of the school boards WERE well run. The problem is that the government should have stepped in a LONG time ago. (For example, both the PSBGM and the English Catholic school boards were well run.)
I don’t want to go into specifics about some of this, but I can tell you that the government has known about the problems at the EMSB and not stepped in for a LONG time. There was the story of the EMSB using school board money for a trip to Italy, just as an example of the abuse. And the fact that they couldn’t close a school because there was no governing board, and yet they weren’t forced to ensure that they had governing boards in each school as require by law that should have been raising a red flag.
And the fact that the CSDM itself has not been doing proper maintenance of it’s buildings is a signal that it isn’t well run… the questions comes, where did the money it was supposed to spend on maintenance go? And where were the governing boards that were supposed to ask the hard questions?
What I am hoping for is that they will set up a greater school board that will be above reproach. One large one for the primary and secondary school systems by language in regions (so Eastern Quebec, Western Quebec, Central Quebec, Northern Quebec, and Montreal Metropolitain) and that they will be based on those school boards that are currently in place and well run, rather than those in place and aren’t well run. But in any case, anything that the CSDM does, including signing on a contract can essentially be undone by the government in law.
Kevin 11:07 on 2019-01-18 Permalink
My speculation is that all the CAQ is going to do is strip the elected commissioners from the various school boards and replace them with smaller groups of government appointees.
While doing this they’ll probably reduce the overall number of boards too.
**I have no special knowledge, I’m just reading the tea leaves.