DO PARENTS AND TAXPAYERS, THROUGH TRUSTEES, REALLY RUN THE SCHOOLS?

Children are our most important resource, which is why education is such an important topic and should be of concern to all. That is why I believe the Alberta Parents Union is a voice that deserves to be heard and considered. What the Alberta Parents Union espouses is but one perspective and those with differing perspectives are welcomed and encouraged to post them on this platform.

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From time to time, we have countered some school choice myths.

Since it’s a school trustee election year, we want to counter a school choice myth related to school trustees, specifically.

Opponents of school choice often argue that public schools are more accountable than charter schools, independent schools (private schools), learning pods (as we have promoted them), or home education (funded or unfunded).

They argue elected school boards provide a level of accountability that isn’t present in these schools without elections defined by geography (since most of these other schools do hold elections for their own boards).

There’s a few problems with this idea, though.

First, non-school-board options are accountable to parents and taxpayers.

In fact, they’re even more directly accountable to parents, the real experts in what the kids need, for these reasons:

• Parents need to feel heard by the school to choose to send their kid there
• These schools are typically designed for more parental involvement
• These schools depend on parents choosing them, and are incentivized to listen and act
• If school refuses to listen and act, families can just as easily leave as they came
• Crucially, school leaders outside of school boards are keenly aware of these incentives

Second, school boards don’t exactly have a strong track record of being accountable to parents or taxpayers.

For one, provincial name and pronoun legislation was necessary because the vast majority of school boards had a policy of keeping name and pronouns changes secret from parents - against the will of taxpayers and, especially, parents.

Parents and taxpayers demanded schools have rules (that they actually enforced) around cellphones and other personal electronic devices.

School boards not only did not institute those rules, or make it easier for schools to do so, they often blamed parents and claimed we opposed such rules.

From 2020 through 2022, school boards ignored both the expertise of the Chief Medical Officer of Health and of parents in their own kids, instituting inexplicable policies.

In the early days of the Alberta Parents’ Union, we warned you that the Calgary Board of Education was sending teen moms from the sheltered programming at the Louise Dean School campus into a dangerous school.

For this, one trustee called us racist (I don’t have to tell you race never entered into our analysis), even after a stabbing had just occurred at the dangerous school.

Despite the most democratic pressure they had likely ever received, thanks to all of you, only one CBE trustee voted not to expose their most vulnerable students to danger.

The Province gave us a partial win and addressed some concerns with the Calgary Board of Education.

However, the real solution to better school board accountability - like always - rests with voters at election time.

Perhaps most directly, we have been raising the alarm about school boards not even pretending to give full representation to parents and taxpayers - namely, by not holding by-elections to fill vacancies.

A few weeks ago, we told you about how the Calgary Catholic School Division refused to hold a by-election when democratic oversight would be maximized, only to be forced by the Education Act to hold one when it would be minimized.

In fact, it’s questionable how much democratic oversight the administration of Calgary Catholic School Division allows - possibly reducing its value even further.

Many school board policies are actually exempt from oversight by the board of trustees (although, the trustees themselves could reverse those exemptions).

Calgary Catholic’s Administrative Procedure 415 (AP 415) prohibits direct communication between school division staff (including teachers) and school board trustees.

It is not simply binding on staff not to approach trustees, but also means a trustee cannot approach staff.

Obviously, many staff are also parents.

Even worse, the administration has interpreted their School Council Handbook to prohibit direct contact between any parents and trustees because it says those conversations need to flow through the chief superintendent.

The “trustee contact phone number” provided to parents is a member of the administration - the only metro school board with this practice.

Calgary Catholic is also the only metro school board not to stream their trustee meetings for the public to watch.

And the Calgary Catholic School Division certainly requires oversight.

Parents deserve an explanation for all kinds of things that have been happening at Calgary Catholic.

They deserve answers for how the superintendent could resign and then be rehired with no explanation.

And they certainly deserve an explanation for how the Division could receive a $5 million boost from the Province a year ago for increased enrollment, cut programming, and still take $21.5 million from reserves to balance their budget.

But, it’s not just Calgary Catholic that needs more oversight!

You may remember us raising the alarm about Elk Island Public Schools, where administration actually coerced a trustee into resigning with a plainly false reading of the Local Authorities Election Act (and, of course, the rest of the board into not replacing him).

Elk Island does stream their meetings, but deletes the videos after 24 hours.

They hired a consulting firm to search for their superintendent, despite ultimately promoting from within, and will not disclose the cost of the consulting firm.

Elk Island also promised parents, “There has been no discussion at either the administrative or board level about closing Andrew School.”

Just seven months later - April 20th and 25th, 2023 - the first public meetings were held to discuss the closure of the school.

On May 4th, the Andrew School closure was final.

We have already seen school divisions wield their Code of Conduct to remove trustees entirely, and some are looking to make it even easier to do so.

The Lethbridge School Division has proposed a new Trustee Code of Conduct that makes it much easier to remove school trustees for social media posts.

The new Code of Conduct also prohibits a trustee from seeking out information they need to govern from anyone but the superintendent.

Indeed, a functional relationship between board and superintendent should supply all the information the board needs to govern.

But requiring this would make a dysfunctional relationship a Code of Conduct violation on the trustee’s part - while the board’s only employee, the superintendent, can avoid accountability.

With only nine months until the next election, we expect to see this kind of Code of Conduct update from many lame-duck school boards.

So, electing trustees through geographically defined elections - when trustees allow those elections to happen - hasn’t seemed to ensure accountability.

So, what’s the solution?

Obviously, introducing more school choice is the big solution.

Choice and competition is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

Each new choice made available and chosen by a family is a lifeline from, all too often, an oppressive feeling of hopelessness for that family’s kids and their futures.

But for a great many families, electing better school boards would also be cause for rejoicing.

(And don't forget, all voters are eligible to participate in school board elections for their area, even if your family has exercised your choice of a non-school-board option.)

So, as always, the Alberta Parents’ Union is fighting for more school choice.

We hope debunking this myth has helped you answer a surprisingly ill-informed objection to choice in education.

But the Alberta Parents’ Union is also trying to provide all parents, grandparents, teachers, and taxpayers with more information about how school boards should run.

But we also think more voters would participate in school board elections, if it weren’t just labour unions surveying candidates and informing their members.

That’s why we’ve been looking for your feedback into our truly transparent, accountable, and democratic survey of candidates for school board trustee.

That’s one of the reasons we started the Alberta Parents’ Union!