The main example here comes from the London Free Press Thursday, with Pat Maloney's article about Coun. Bill Armstrong's refusal to allow himself to be nominated for an upcoming Thames Valley District School Board review. There was a followup piece Friday.
Armstrong is quoted in the article itself and in the comment section noting he will not participate in the ARC because he wants all four schools to stay open and would rather concentrate on a community based campaign.
Armstrong raised his concern Wednesday as board of control discussed a Thames Valley school board invitation to put a city representative on a committee reviewing the future of four east-end schools: F.D. Roosevelt, Lord Nelson, Prince Charles and Sir Winston Churchill.Then, just to make sure you understood his point, from the comments section of the same article:
All those schools except Roosevelt are in Armstrong’s Ward 2. School board administration has recommended closing Churchill.
Armstrong said he won’t join the Thames Valley board’s accommodation review of the four schools — “you’re just lining up to take flack” — but he plans to set up a community group to fight any closing.
“This is what the review is all about — whether they should stay open or closed,” he said.
The schools in question form part of neighbourhood communities. Closing any of these schools would have an impact on the community. In order to save a few dollars, I cannot and will not support forcing students to walk further or be bused when they currently are happy in their neighbourhood school.It frustrates me when members of municipal councils fail to understand what a review committee is and what its task is. These councillors all sit on a board (of their municipal corporation) where staff bring them reports containing recommendations. Councils have committees that study controversial matters and, using both the information and recommendations received from staff members serving the committee, committee members and those in the public who address the committee, make decisions and recommendations. Armstrong's own role as a city councillor relies on receiving recommendations, advice and public input into the decisions he is compelled to make as a municipal councillor. I would guarantee every councillor in municipal politics has looked at the information and opinion before them and made a decision that was controversial. That they've made what they felt was the best decision for the interests of the greatest number of people that some people vehemently oppose.
These neighbourhood schools provide many services. This would all be lost. Finally, I have heard negative comments about the ARC process from other Councillors. This is why Board of Control is recommending that I or any other member of Council not sit on this Committee.
I made this very point with a politician in my coverage area during the first round of reviews. He was opposed to the school board's decision on rural school closures, yet in the very same term had been part of a library board (a committee of council) that had closed a series of small county library branches. So while pulling one service out of these smaller rural villages, he was opposing another board's process to consider the same factors for schools.
So serving on a review committee shouldn't be rocket science to a municipal councillor.
Yet the City of London in particular has done a piss-poor job of sitting on most accommodation reviews held for London schools. If Coun. Armstrong wants his community schools to remain open, he can be part of the review committee that develops alternatives for trustees to consider. As a councillor, he just might be able to facilitate conversations about alternatives and discussion of partnership opportunities between school board staff members and either the city itself or community agencies.
Or, I guess, he can just crap all over the committee and the school board at the 11th hour, when the committee provides recommendations to trustees he can't support.
So which one is truly the more effective strategy? Which one is actually going to help students remain in community schools while accessing the best possible physical learning spaces and program opportunities that can feasibly be provided by the school board? Which one would allow for new partnerships to be developed between the school board and the municipality or community agencies?
Or, which one provides the better platform to throw stones from the sidelines and complain about the end result (that you played no part in)?
It brings to mind another one -- a la Community Schools Alliance -- where councils are calling on the Avon Maitland District School Board to postpone reviews until the Education Funding Formula review is complete. There's nothing like a vain attempt to delay a review that should probably happen now and won't be any easier to do if delayed another couple of years.
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10 comments:
Find those comments cryptic, but a welcome insight into how widely read your blog is ER! Funding review isn't going to happen, or rather the current consultation on the release of this year's GSNs is doubling up as the funding review. They will take some political heat for this, since they had promised a major review this year, but given the financial realities of the day the fact that there is no money to add makes a review, and the anticipation that might be attached to it, as politically dangerous as not doing one. Anything that could be done in a review now would be shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic, to no good effect.
You are dead on about the accommodation committees ER - they are committees of the board, and are run under the rules the board sets. They want the opinions of the committees to help inform their decisions - the committees aren't to make the decision. I think some people fear that if they sit on it they will be tarred and feathered by their communities for being co-opted by the board. I think that may sometimes be a possibility, and therefore they want to sling arrows from outside (perhaps especially in a municipal election year?).
The reviews are flawed, and haven't been amended enough to change that fact. My community ARC saw right through the pretense of the board administration and trustees looking for input and feedback when it became clear that the board had an agenda/plan it had drafted and was determined to follow to their conclusions. The input of the public didn't really matter. It's all smoke and mirrors. Boards should just make the decisions, take the lumps and criticism for making those tough decisions. If it's all about educating children that is. If it's all about the bottom-line then say so up front.
Anon 30 Jan. 10:48
Sorry, I don't share your cynicism and pessimism on that.
I think the missing dynamic is the quality of the input provided. If people don't recognize the need for the review is a need for change, then yelling and screaming the status quo over and over and over again won't have an impact.
Then it becomes a self-sustaining prophecy. I hate your idea, I don't want change. I'm yelling for the status quo and you've stopped listening. So now, I can claim you never meant to listen to me in the first place. That it's all smoke and mirrors, etc.
I think we need to realize input is input. You're not doing a trustee's job for them when you provide input. You're giving them options. If they don't choose your option(s), don't just huff and walk away. Ask why. Every trustee I've spoken to can provide an explanation for why they made a decision. If they can't, they shouldn't have that job.
Hugo
"Input is only input" if in the case of accommodation reviews trustees and board administrations have every intention of exploring alternatives to their fullest. That is not always the case ER.
Some boards simply go through the motions.
Shouldn't be too hard to find boards which have sided with an alternative.
Anon 30 Jan. 22:11
So does a board "go through the motions" if the trustees end up agreeing with the initial recommendation provided by administration?
I don't know the conclusive answer to that question when it comes to every review, every vote. But if that's the way you feel, it's up to you (or whomever these trustees' constituents are) to hold them accountable for explaining their decision. That takes effort, an effort not all are willing to make.
Hugo
Quick example of a board and community that worked together for an alternative would be one to the west of me in St. Marys. From what I remember of that one the board staff had proposed closing two elementary schools, and adding a large extension to the high school to make it K - 12. Not popular, and the board and its staff ended up working with the town and the province - the town provided land, both the town and the board lobbied the local MPP, who was very receptive and in turn worked hard with the Minister of Education and her staff so that the province provided money, the board provided leadership and money, and in the end the board realized its goal of closing two very old schools and consolidating them into a brand new school which, I believe, is under construction now. Without the community consultation the board would have built the extension. So boards do listen - the factor that constrains alternative solutions is often financial - I doubt that in the current financial climate this would have happened.
I don't see why school boards needed the government to pass common sense guidelines to essentially tell them to outreach their communities.
Shouldn't boards have already been doing this on their own? Government shouldn't have had to step in on this.
The one assumption made by the new guidelines that I felt was inaccurate was that the guidelines were written in such a way that presumed that school councils in tact, working and effective in the province.
In our case that was a false assumption that left councils scrambling to comply with the basic regulations.
I'm one of those strange individuals who trusts my locally elected trustees than I do school board administration or government(which to me are very close to being one and the same)
I also found that the guidelines tried to divert the attention of school reviews away from the money issue and in some cases failed to do that when the final decisions were usually all about the bottom-line.
CC
Maybe what this province needs is a real thorough review(and forensic audit) of all its school boards.
Something has to give.
Over the weekend for the first time ever, that I can remember I saw ads for a the Catholic school system and the French Catholic system in northern Ontario. Looks like the competition for students is hitting the airwaves.
Not the first time I've heard a request for a forensic audit - interesting concept, since it assumes that the tight controls that the Ministry places on school board spending are somehow being circumvented. Also implies criminal activity - and while there have been instances of that (largely to do with siphoning off cash, such as fundraising dollars), the evidence that money is being stolen at various levels of the organization would be non-existent. Perhaps not used as Anon 8:20 might wish - but that is a different question.
RetDir. - can't speak for Anon. re: the forensic audit but another province wide review of boards isn't a bad idea.
There are still many boards that aren't as accountable to their community as others.
Oh, and by the way and a bit off topic.
My local newspaper today reports that Huron/Bruce MP has joined Larry Miller in advocating for his community by requesting a hold on any further school closures until the gov't gets that funding review done that was promised when Dalton was first elected.
The whole article should be on the paper's website but it's often a day late.
CC
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