The importance of school trustees

Your kids go to school. Your tax dollars support schools. Who is supposed to make sure that your school board is in a strong financial position? Who is supposed to make sure that local schools are doing all they can to help students succeed? Who is accountable to you directly?

It's the school board trustees.

I will concede that people don’t know enough about what trustees do. Part of that is because of the decline of local news, combined with the fact that school boards don’t set tax rates anymore. Here in Kingston and the Islands, people may not know that our school boards are not like the ones being taken over elsewhere in Ontario.

However, the Ford government’s recent musings about getting rid of school board trustees should raise alarms about local input into the education system. This seems to be part of a long-term, pan-government plan to centralize control. They stopped funding the Board Leadership Development Strategy when they took office in 2018-19.

Is violence in schools up in your community? It’s up 77% Ontario-wide since the Ford government took office, according to Global News. How much does that affect your community? Is your local school short of educational assistants? Are the special ed teachers not able to deliver special ed to students in your school? These are challenges across Ontario, but local concerns need to be reported to the Ministry, as well as acted on locally.

La suppression, effectivement, de la représentation des communautés locales dans les écoles reflète la volonté persistante du gouvernement conservateur de l’Ontario de centraliser l’éducation et d’affaiblir la gouvernance locale. Cela est extrêmement préoccupant pour les communautés en situation minoritaire, comme les francophones de l’Ontario.

Finally, in Kingston’s local boards, we have student trustees. These are students who can independently keep an eye on school boards and speak out if they wish. That’ll be gone if Premier Ford has his way.