SchoolTrustees
The traditional school year is over, and the race for school board trustee is underway!
The October 20th election may seem plenty far away, but with the summer break followed immediately by the back-to-school rush, it will sneak up on us quickly.
Of course, the majority of students (and the majority of children of Alberta Parents' Union supporters) who attend residentially-assigned schools have their education affected by elected school board officials.
In fact, one of the major problems with the current crop of school board trustees is that they practice learned helplessness.
They don't exercise their proper authority and they allow Administration to run amok.
But as we've we’ve written about before - and will write again with more examples - school board trustees don’t only affect families in residentially assigned schools.
They also affect those who have opted for schools of choice, as well.
While education is a provincial responsibility, a preference for local control has led to the Government of Alberta delegating many responsibilities - including spending priorities and much of the social policy surrounding schools - to elected school trustees.
Many of the decisions parents most frequently come to us in anger over are made by elected school boards.
And we know that there's a shaky foundation underneath the crumbling facade we can see.
That's why we want to do more research into the management, transparency, and priorities of school boards.
We also have promised to survey trustee candidates in every ward in every school division in Alberta and present their answers publicly.
We did this with great success for the Calgary Catholic by-election, and are confident that parents all over the province will benefit from more information about trustee candidates.
Our commitment is to equip parents - as well as grandparents, taxpayers, and educators who support us - to make a difference in these school board elections.
How can we do that?
We can vote.
Turnout is much lower for municipal elections than it is for provincial and federal elections.
Even fewer people vote for school trustees, even if they're already at the polling station for mayor or council.
That means your vote - in particular, your informed vote - has a greater impact than you may think.
If you take the time to be informed about the issues and the positions of the candidates, which we hope to facilitate, then you can multiply your impact by helping friends and neighbours get informed too.
While engaging friends and neighbours in the process informally will multiply the impact of simply casting a well-researched vote yourself, you can increase your effectiveness even more by offering your time to a quality candidate's campaign.
Most candidates for school trustee don't have volunteers outside their immediate family.
With volunteers, quality candidates can connect with more voters and make sure they're engaged with the issues in time for the October 20th election.
And helping a candidate you support is easier than you might think.
We would like to offer training in grassroots advocacy that will give you the confidence to help a trustee candidate of your choice.
Of course, if you simply cannot find a trustee candidate you can support in your area, you could perhaps run yourself!
We refuse to be like far too many school boards and wallow in learned helplessness.
We can make a difference for Alberta students, together.
If we keep re-electing school board trustees who refuse to plan, prioritize, and fight for students, we're sending the message that mediocrity is acceptable.
If you, like so many of us, are not satisfied with the status quo in education, then sign up to volunteer, and we may announce a training session in your area:
The Calgary Catholic School Division is holding a by-election to fill two trustee vacancies on January 31st.
One of the vacancies - in Wards 11/12 - was caused by the death of Cathie Williams in July 2024.
But, the earlier vacancy - in Wards 4/7 - dates back to December 14th, 2022 - more than two years ago.
How? Why?
Well, let us explain...
This Calgary Catholic School Division by-election exposes an absurdity in the Education Act that applies province-wide, and which our Alberta Parents’ Union has been working to fix through our “Parents Deserve School Trustee By-elections” campaign.
In this situation, simply put, the Education Act does not require a by-election if the school board has only one vacancy, whereas it does require a by-election if the school board has two vacancies.
Normally, school boards are allowed to hold a by-election if they want, but they don't have to.
On the surface, that seems to kind of make sense.
Why go through all the time and expense of holding a by-election if you don't have to?
But - as with many government rules - the more you think about it, and the more you consider the possible implications of the rule, the less it makes sense.
Let's go back to the Calgary Catholic School Division.
Ironically, the vacancy in December 2022 was what (at least, in part) triggered us to launch this campaign to change the rules in the first place.
The vacancy occurred only a little bit more than a year after the election and, at the time, the Calgary Catholic School Division chose not to hold a by-election, leaving parents in Wards 4 and 7 without representation for almost three years!
Yet now, with just nine months until the next general election, because the number of vacancies rose from one to two - however different in length the vacancies are - the Education Act now requires a by-election, where before it did not.
There is simply no rational way to justify not holding a by-election then, and holding one now.
If anyone objects that a vacancy of two trustees is qualitatively different than missing only one - on a board with seven trustees at a full roster - we agree!
But, that is all the more reason to require a by-election at the first vacancy, not at the second - the board with seven trustees has been missing two since July last year already!
In fact, this highlights another reason why it would have been wiser for the school board to voluntarily hold the one by-election in 2023 - if only to avoid the absurd Education Act requirement to hold two by-elections in a general election year!
This Education Act requirement is especially inexplicable since it does not match the requirements of the other municipal governments.
At a minimum, the rules for municipal and school board by-elections should be brought into alignment, so that by-elections are required if there is a substantial period of time left until the next general election, and left as optional if they arise close to the next general election.
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Importantly, we shouldn't hold any of this against the school trustee candidates running for the vacant seats.
Parents need serious trustees to bring real accountability to administration, and we applaud anyone who runs understanding the task before them.
This also doesn’t mean we won’t be engaging with the Calgary Catholic by-election ourselves.
We are using this by-election as a dry-run of our project to survey all trustee candidates all across the province in the general election in October.
Our email next week will reveal the survey answers of the by-election candidates (and those who have not answered, which may be, itself, revealing).
We’ll be looking for your help - whether you live in Calgary or not - in telling us if we’re on the right track with our methods in this survey and in the questions we asked, or if you have changes to suggest.
For all of us, this serves as a useful exercise to consider what we want to see from our trustee candidates.
We share news of school boards behaving badly, not because we revel in them, but because it sharpens our thinking about what good decisions from school boards would look like.
When the Province leaves it to school boards to leave parents unrepresented for years, but then requires them to pull money out of classro