I received a letter today from Ontario's Minister of Education, Leona Dombrowsky. I waited for seven weeks for this letter. I had no great expectations that this letter would contain good news or any nice surprises. My modest expectations turned out to be appropriate. There was nothing good in the letter. Still it has had a dramatic effect on me.
I AM ANGRY? DEEPLY ANGRY!
Actually the anger that I feel surprises me. I have been in this fight on the closing of our Blyth Public School for years. I am fully aware that the chances are slim to nil that the decision will be reversed.
So I am asking myself why am I suddenly so bitterly angry at Leona Dombrowsky.
Perhaps it is in part because of the experience we've been through during the past week with the death of Jack Layton and the outpouring of emotion we have been feeling. Yes, that is really part of it. Here I am reading a letter from an Ontario Cabinet Minister who is presiding over a slimy government ploy, a kind of tag team game with Avon Maitland DSB, closing schools for no good reason, pretending that they have consulted us, telling us lies and manufacturing stories to make un-involved people think that they are "doing the right things".
Yes, this is one reason why the anger boils over. We have marvelled at the stories of Jack, this very courageous man, we've been moved by his letter to Canadians, we've shed a few tears seeing the deep sorrow of his wife, Olivia, and noting her personal strength. Even though I have never voted for his party, I have been thinking how great it would be to find another provincial or federal leader with that kind of character and moral fiber. None come to mind at the present.
And here I am instead reading a letter from a political hack, covering up her tracks, trying to justify the actions of school boards who are tearing the heart and soul out of community after community by closing their only schools. There is no right of appeal. They do not need to explain their reasoning to anyone. They don't even need to apologize. And the Minister just turns a blind eye to the carnage these boards like AMDSB are inflicting on their neighbours' communities. And she writes letters to us, as if we are just having a minor disagreement of opinion. Then she has the nerve to suggest that concerned people like me "work with their local school board and assist in the transition of students to their new accommodations..."
How do we deal with people whom we cannot believe? How can we trust our local school board once they have stabbed our community in the back? The big shock came about a few weeks ago when I came to the realization that this is not just a local scam perpetrated by our school board; it is being done in collusion with our provincial Liberal government who issued what appear to be very strict rules for boards to be open, consultative, fair, community-sensitive, and then do absolutely nothing to enforce those rules.
I have no idea which party I will vote for on October 6, but it will definitely not be the Ontario Liberal Party!
Brock Vodden
About a remarkable Ontario village
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Truth About Accommodation Review in North Huron
There is no doubt that the Avon Maitland District School Board cheated in its conduct of the Pupil Accommodation Review for North Huron. The Ministry on its website describes both the authority of school boards to make decisions about closing, consolidating and building new schools, and the mandatory requirements which the boards MUST meet in making and implementing these decisions.
The Ministry's requirements are presented in bold below with comments on how the AMDSB failed to meet each of these requirements. Key words are italicized for emphasis by the blog author:
This process must follow the school board's policy that governs accommodation reviews.
Boards are required to ensure their own accommodation review policy (also known as a school closure policy) is compliant with the ministry's revised guideline.
The board failed to follow its own policies and ignored many of the ministry's guidelines. The most critical oversight was the board's failure to complete a valuation of the school to the local economy. Had this criterion been completed honestly, it would have been impossible for the board to close the BPS.
The ministry has issued a Pupil Accommodation Review Guideline that outlines the minimum requirements for school boards.
This statement means that the ministry's guidelines are mandatory, since they are minimum requirements. Approximately half of those guidelines were violated in the board's actual procedures.
The heart of this process is community consultation through representation on the ARC and through public meetings.
The representation on the ARC was not even close to a reflection of the Blyth community. There was no representation from Blyth business, Blyth Ward councillors, members at large from the community. Invitation were sent home with pupils for their parents; consequently the participants were mostly from the school community.
The ministry encourages students, parents and community members to get involved in the accommodation review process.
The entire ARC process in North Huron was a farce in that the board had already made its decisions. The community involvement turned out to be irrelevant. In fact, the ARC served the board as a diversion to keep the the school community busy while it carried out the administration's plans.
This document provides school boards and their communities with a tool to ensure transparency and accountability in an accommodation review process.
The boards decisions were all made in secret since they bear no relationship to the discussions that took place in the community forums. There was no transparency. Since neither the ministry, the Minister, the facilitator, and the community could not change the decision or appeal it, there was no accountability
Since the Ministry has made no effort to enforce its guidelines, has presented no sanctions for boards' deviations from the spirit and the words of their policy, the Ministry itself is at fault for the damage being done to communities such as Blyth by its becoming a community with no school.
Boards are required to ensure their own accommodation review policy (also known as a school closure policy) is compliant with the ministry's revised guideline.
As mentioned above, many of the ministry's guidelines were ignored by AMDSB, but also the ministry-appointed "independent" facilitator made no mention of those oversights in her review of the petition.
It appears that much of the boards decision-making took place in secrecy, taking illegal advantage of in camera meetings with no public scrutiny and no transparency.
The Ministry's requirements are presented in bold below with comments on how the AMDSB failed to meet each of these requirements. Key words are italicized for emphasis by the blog author:
This process must follow the school board's policy that governs accommodation reviews.
Boards are required to ensure their own accommodation review policy (also known as a school closure policy) is compliant with the ministry's revised guideline.
The board failed to follow its own policies and ignored many of the ministry's guidelines. The most critical oversight was the board's failure to complete a valuation of the school to the local economy. Had this criterion been completed honestly, it would have been impossible for the board to close the BPS.
The ministry has issued a Pupil Accommodation Review Guideline that outlines the minimum requirements for school boards.
This statement means that the ministry's guidelines are mandatory, since they are minimum requirements. Approximately half of those guidelines were violated in the board's actual procedures.
The heart of this process is community consultation through representation on the ARC and through public meetings.
The representation on the ARC was not even close to a reflection of the Blyth community. There was no representation from Blyth business, Blyth Ward councillors, members at large from the community. Invitation were sent home with pupils for their parents; consequently the participants were mostly from the school community.
The ministry encourages students, parents and community members to get involved in the accommodation review process.
The entire ARC process in North Huron was a farce in that the board had already made its decisions. The community involvement turned out to be irrelevant. In fact, the ARC served the board as a diversion to keep the the school community busy while it carried out the administration's plans.
This document provides school boards and their communities with a tool to ensure transparency and accountability in an accommodation review process.
The boards decisions were all made in secret since they bear no relationship to the discussions that took place in the community forums. There was no transparency. Since neither the ministry, the Minister, the facilitator, and the community could not change the decision or appeal it, there was no accountability
Since the Ministry has made no effort to enforce its guidelines, has presented no sanctions for boards' deviations from the spirit and the words of their policy, the Ministry itself is at fault for the damage being done to communities such as Blyth by its becoming a community with no school.
Boards are required to ensure their own accommodation review policy (also known as a school closure policy) is compliant with the ministry's revised guideline.
As mentioned above, many of the ministry's guidelines were ignored by AMDSB, but also the ministry-appointed "independent" facilitator made no mention of those oversights in her review of the petition.
It appears that much of the boards decision-making took place in secrecy, taking illegal advantage of in camera meetings with no public scrutiny and no transparency.
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