Wanderings – Are Ontario’s school boards relevant anymore?

Next week as voters cast their ballots in municipal elections, they have the option to vote in school board trustee elections. In many areas, including where I live, the school board trustee was acclaimed. Seeing the apathy in the political process of school boards, and the top-down nature of education in Ontario now, I wonder if school boards are relevant anymore?

Ontario has 76 school boards, and four school systems. Each board has trustees elected by supporters of whichever system you belong to. Pick your language – English or French; and pick your faith – secular (public) or Catholic.

School boards operate like quasi-municipal governments except for a very critical issue – taxation. Many years ago before Mike Harris-era cabinet minister John Snobelen decided he wanted to create a “useful crisis” in the education system, school boards controlled taxation powers at the municipal level. Electing trustees was an accountability measure for residents. Taxation powers were eliminated by Snobelen, and so too was the effective need for trustees – or for that matter school boards.

That isn’t to say there are not great people who run and serve as school board trustees, but really the role of trustees has become an elected rubber stamp for administration or provincial decisions. Few raise real issues in schools or their areas. Many sit and vote on what administration puts in front of them.

There are exceptions to this rule. Upper Canada District School Board trustees voted to reverse an order to close a school that the board had not yet closed near Kemptville. The board voted year after year to defer closing that school, and opted this fall to take it off the chopping block. I wonder if this protracted process would have saved some of the other schools in the region that the board closed too quickly?

Aside from this school closure/non-closure issue locally, what do school board trustees do at meetings? Duplicative functions of administration. But let’s look deeper.

School boards implement policies and curriculum development by the Ministry of Education. The province dictates and the school boards implement. Mandarins at Queen’s Park and the ministry determine what will happen, often creating a one-size, fits-all provincial solution, and boards do the work.

Funding for schools is set by the province. Teacher and staff union contracts are negotiated provincially by the provincial government not local school boards. Capital projects for new schools or renovations are approved by the province.

If more and more of the day-to-day function of school boards is reliant on the provincial ministry – and there is no real authority or voice to put an identifiable stamp on local education – why have school boards at all?

I am not foolish enough to suggest that eliminating school boards and absorbing those administrative functions into another government body will find cost savings. No amalgamation does that. It seems like it is only a matter of time before this becomes a foregone conclusion.

School boards already have difficulty finding candidates for trustees. One Eastern Ontario board had to extend the nomination deadline to find a candidate who was then acclaimed.

Another “co-terminous” board in the region did not have a candidate for this area, even with nomination deadline extensions meaning the rest of the trustees will have to appoint someone to represent the area in November. Imagine if federal MPs were allowed to choose their own candidate to fill a vacancy. No one would stand for it. However in education we do.

This acknowledges the writing that’s already on the wall about Ontario’s education system – and we’re not the only ones.

Quebec eliminated its school board system entirely in 2020. While not as controversial as when it reorganized its education system on linguistic lines 25 years ago, the move admitted that school boards are redundant.

Eliminating school boards is not a new idea and it is a question asked all over Canada – from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island and areas in between.

Back to Ontario – school boards cannot levy taxes, negotiate labour contracts, or create curriculum without jumping through a provincial hoop or getting the sign-off from a provincial official.

It’s time to put the school board system out of its misery and send it to the pasture of no longer relevant government institutions.

Getting rid of school boards will not reduce our representation or control over the education system, because we haven’t had any for 25-plus years. It’s time to face that fact and move on.

Column originally published in the October 19, 2022 edition of The Morrisburg Leader.