Monday, August 24, 2009

Wynne speaks on CSA

Had to post this when it flew through my inbox. Tiffany Mayer at the St. Catharines Standard wrote about the Community Schools Alliance meeting at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario meeting last week, and her story includes quotes from Education Minister Kathleen Wynne. As far as I can recall, this is the first time Wynne has been publicly quoted on the meeting with the CSA.
From the piece:
Though she called it a good meeting, Wynne didn’t buy in to the group’s concept of a “smart moratorium.”
“We’re not going to invoke a moratorium on school closures or consolidations because we really believe that school boards need to be able to make those decisions community by community,” Wynne said.
Instead, Wynne presented the group, which includes Niagara-on-the-Lake Lord Mayor Gary Burroughs and Coun. Jim Collard, with a draft policy calling for partnerships between school boards and their communities to share school facilities, including unoccupied space in schools.
...
Wynne said the draft policy “goes a long way to putting in place the expectation that boards will work with municipalities and work with other partners and make their school usage policies more open and transparent so that the decisions can be community based as opposed to simply the board of education.”
Kudos to Mayer for calling the minister and getting the quotes.
I know at least one reporter who'll be asking for a copy of this policy too...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't the Niagara area one of the growth districts of the province?

re: draft policy - why are we reinventing this wheel? There are wonderful boards and municipalities that have been working well for years.

I understand where the CSA is coming from, but, to ask small communities like mine to now comply with more central policy when they've done nicely on their own is insulting.

Lower enrolments coupled with massive job loses means that every one loses. From the swimming lessons at the rec. facility to
the number of organizations needing space.

I can see why if I were part of a municipality that had worked hard to be a good partner with my local boards this policy might rub me the entirely wrong way.

So ER, I'm hoping that it's not a nanny state type policy that reads well at the board table but is impractical where the rubber hits the road.

Education Reporter said...

See the next post for more info.

Hugo