Montreal schools to get infrastructure millions
Quebec is handing off nearly a billion dollars to schools in Montreal for new schools and renovation of old ones. The money is going to three francophone service centres (once known as school boards).
Speaking of school boards, Superior Court has ruled that, temporarily at least, Quebec’s Bill 40 won’t apply to the old English-language boards, which were also supposed to be abolished. They’re being upheld, for the moment, as part of linguistic minority rights, and may be holding old-style school board elections on November 1.
The CAQ continues to maintain that abolishing the anglo boards does too respect anglo rights.
walkerp 10:22 on 2020-09-18 Permalink
Well a priori that is good news on the money. I hope we see increase in support and money for teachers as well as some serious innovative building design for our zootropic future.
I have mixed feelings about the english school board. It is clearly a total shit show and needs to be reformed almost entirely, with some new governance system that does not allow for little fiefdoms to be built and that prioritizes teaching over administration and bureaucracy. On the other hand, these “service centers” utterly failed their first test when it came to distance learning. Our school was paralyzed with the principal getting mixed messages and no real support for setting up classes remotely and supporting families with tech challenges.
Tim F 21:16 on 2020-09-18 Permalink
In defence of the service centres, it must be total chaos going through these organizational reforms while also having to adapt to COVID, all on a shoestring budget. Our kids’ school’s principal was pregnant and needed to be cycled out; the time it took to select a new principal made their ability to prepare and effectively communicate changes to families a real challenge. I can only imagine with all of these school board/service centre reforms, too.
nau 10:06 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
There are several English school boards. The EMSB is a shit show, yes, but are the others?
Ian 14:23 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
Lester B Pearson is much, much bigger but we don’t hear as much about it. There was a minor ethics scandal in 2016 but a bunch of people got fired and since then that’s about it.