B.C.’s school trustees — and B.C. superintendents, for that matter — must be looking, perhaps a little nervously, at the changes in governance under discussion in both Ontario and Quebec.
Speaking during a deputation before the province’s standing committee on social policy, board chair Rachel Chernos Lin enumerated the many concerns about Bill 98, saying: “School boards play a vital role in making sure local priorities are reflected in public education. It is critical that the province continue to provide significant space for this local input.
That, apparently, will include guidelines setting out specific training to be completed by board members, directors of education, supervisory officers and superintendents, including the content, timing and frequency of training. Quebec is also moving in the direction of changing the locally elected governance model to a centralized control configuration directing the conduct of public education.
According to Dan Lamoureux, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association, Bill 23 — tabled by Education Minister Bernard Drainville in the legislature this month — is “another attempt by this government not only to centralize power but also remove our communities’ rights to manage and control our institutions by virtue of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”