SCHOOL BOARD REFORM DESPERATELY NEEDED

The way we were

This picture was taken in the spring of 1953 on the steps at the front entrance of Clinton District Collegiate Institute. The students, all from the Grade 13 class of that year, hailed from various communities within the district. Each of these communities its own school board with representatives on the Collegiate district board.

These students were represented and their home communities were represented. In most cases, these students were known personally to those representatives. The decisions made by these trustees reflected their concern for the educational needs and opportunities of these students as well as the needs and interests of their whole communities.

Those days of representative democracy in education are gone now. Sadly, they are gone!

The system in decline: Taxation without representation

Instead, we have a school board, Avon Maitland District School Board, made up of nine members from all over two counties: Huron County and Perth County. If they know any of the students attending these schools, it is a purely accidental happening. They don't even know most of the communities they are expected to represent. What is more - they don't care about those communities, except perhaps for the one in which they happen to live. A senior administrator for the system was quoted as saying that "we are only concerned about the schools, not the community. If closing a school causes difficulties for the community, the community will have to deal with it. It is not our concern."

We can't truly refer to these members as "trustees". We cannot trust them to represent our communities. They work for someone else. We are not sure what is the basis of their strange behaviour.

Back in 1953, school boards represented their communities. Today, AMDSB has been co-opted by the Ministry of Education to serve the political needs and wishes of the McGuinty government. They are led by a pack of non-accountable self-serving administrators who have no sense of community and not much wisdom related to education either. Not only does this board hold a silo mentality; they are a silo built within a fortress.

AMDSB's Hidden Agenda

They have declared that they can no longer afford to operate our Blyth Public School (among others).

The reason given is the evil funding formula, and the declining enrollment.

Too many schools, too many classrooms, not enough children! So what is the first measure taken to solve these problems? It is to build a new 24 room school. Cost: approaching $14 million dollars.

Does that make any sense?

Two weeks or so from now, Blyth Public School will be history.

HISTORY!  That brings up another issue. 

AMDSB Fails its history test

AMDSB is writing its own history about the Blyth Public School. Anything in that history that might make them appear to be stupid or dishonest or incompetent (and there are many examples of each), they alter the facts to create a better image - the image that they wish were true.

The Ministry of Education is complicit in this process of revising the history of our school and our community. They sent one of their consulting flunkies to perform an administrative review on the ARC process that took place here. Margaret Wilson did quite a number on us. She ignored all of the cheating and missteps  committed by the board during the ARC process and declared that their ARCing job was exemplary.

So our little community of Blyth is all wrapped up in pink paper and tied with a bow.

If we seek the truth from the board, they give us their revisionist version backed up by Margaret Wilson's fictional report. If we lodge a complaint against the Ministry with the Ontario Ombudsman for the way we've been treated (and I have done that), the feedback we get is Ms Wilson's fiction backed up by the school board's revised account of what AMDSB would like us to think happened.

As a self-appointed volunteer historian of this community, I take great exception to these interlopers producing distorted accounts of the life and times of our village. I take exception to the damage this board is doing to the quality of our education. 

AMDSB, by closing our only school, has delivered a serious blow to this community. Economically, socially, and educationally!  Education needs to be intrinsically tied to the community of the learner. That link is being broken for Blyth.

We must face the fact that our school is lost - probably forever. But we must engage in a new war to achieve a complete reform of the school board system and the Ministry of Education as well, since the Ministry has allowed rogue boards like ours to corrupt the Ontario education system.

Throw the bums out.

At the very least we must see that we have community-minded candidates for all positions for school board in 2014. They must be prepared to get rid of the dry rot in the administration and give notice to the Ministry of Education that that the new board will strive for a better education system that serves the needs of the whole communities in which the students live.

Then we must work with boards across the province to eliminate the corruption within the Ontario Ministry of Education and to revise the Education Act so that school boards are subject to the same planning requirements as everyone else in the making of decisions that have major effects on neighbourhoods and the community in general.

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We received a phone call a week ago from a 90 year old lady friend who was raised in Blyth. She told us that she called the school board office and asked the receptionist whose idea it was to close the Blyth School. The reply was that the school board decided that. I have to translate her reply slightly:
She shouted "Get rid of the buggers!" and hung up.