A major overhaul of Manitoba’s education system, proposed in a bill before the legislature by the province’s Progressive Conservative government, continues to raise eyebrows across the province.
The government’s plans include eliminating all but one of Manitoba’s elected school boards, merging school divisions and setting up a province-wide education authority.
The Manitoba School Boards Association said Monday the approach would make it hard for parents to hold people accountable for education decisions.
“Democracy, in every way today, has been snuffed out by this plan,” association president Alan Campbell said when the bill was announced.
But Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said Tuesday “the front line is where the accountability lies” and argued against the necessity of trustees for parents and schools.
“Did we vote for our doctor? Do we vote for our dentist? Do we vote about the store we go to the shop? We choose our services with the best interests of our children and our families in mind,” said Pallister.
“And that’s exactly what we have the right to do in Manitoba with our schools.
“If you ask parents, and I have, they’ll tell you they don’t go to school trustees and superintendents when they have a problem with their child, they go straight to the teacher. And that teacher is the level of accountability that they expect to get.”
Former trustee and current University of Manitoba professor Laura Reimer told Global News while the knee-jerk reaction is to think of lost jobs, savings can come from lots of other places, too.
“The functions can be maintained and streamlined so that people do keep their jobs, but the costs associated with — for example, multiple school bus systems, multiple garages, even multiple reporting, are where I think we’re going to see the big savings.”
Reimer said the province doing away with multiple contract negotiations will help issues at the local level be heard down on Broadway both quicker and more often.
“Under the current system, the agreements were essentially the same. They were when there were 57 school divisions, they were when there were 37 school divisions — whatever is agreed to is agreed to across the board.
“This way we’re going to see at least the opportunity for a local voice to say, ‘this needs to be part of a larger picture.'”
Former Louis Riel School Division superintendent Dwayne Brothers said consolidating school boards like this is largely unprecedented … but pointed to Calgary, where there are only two, as a potential comparable — and pointing out that it may not give the province the savings it hopes for.
“Whereas they only have a board of seven trustees and they only have a superintendent team, they also have a number of board offices littered throughout the city of Calgary,” he said.
“So it’s not necessarily clear that shrinking down to one school board is necessarily going to save you a lot of money.”
Brothers said the success of this plan lies in how effectively the consolidated boards are governed — and how they’ll be able to create and maintain a culture of success for children throughout the province.
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