Editor’s note: Over the next four days Tomorrow’s Trust will post four articles in response to the call for papers on “Ontario School Board Governance For The 21st Century“. Each of the four articles will address one of the four “discussion” areas identified in the December 2008 “Consultation Paper” of The Governance Review Committee.  The four papers will constitute Tomorrow’s Trust’s response and will be delivered to the Commission chairs Madeleine Chevalier and Rick Johnson at the roundtable to be held in Thunder Bay, Ontario on February 6^th. 2009.

Questions for Discussion One: 1) For what should school boards be accountable? 2) What are the appropriate roles and responsibilities of: a) the board? b) the Chair? c) individual trustees? d) the Director of Education? And 3) Should Directors of Education have a dual reporting relationship.

A Report to the Commission on the Modernization of School Board Governance

by John Borst

Discussion 1:

Modernizing the Education Act

_______________________________________________

The single most important role for which trustees and the director should be accountable is leadership.

Enough books to fill a small library have been written on leadership. In this context, this review is really about the meaning and role of leadership in education at the local level.

Leadership, however, has common characteristics regardless of the political level and venue within which it is considered.

All members of society, both deep within themselves and in organizations within society, have two fundamentally opposed views of leadership. On one end of the spectrum are those who, on a majority of issues tend towards an Authoritarian focus. At the other end are those who favour a Liberal perspective. The first accepts that authority from some higher order, such as a Ministry of Education is acceptable at the local level, even in a democracy. The latter believe that authority rests first with the local citizenry and that the central authority should be limited to creating the broad strokes and direction.

Two freedoms fundamental to educational governance cross on this spectrum: freedom of thought and freedom of action.

The last decade of the 20th Century saw a strong trend and eventually a decision to constrain the freedom of action of school trustees by imposing an Authority based regime at the Provincial level.  Freedom of action was first constrained by the imposition of a tightly regimented funding formula and an end to the ability of school trustees to determine the local levy for school taxes. This more than the amalgamation of school boards has revolutionized school governance in the Province of Ontario.

Coupled with this has been the simultaneous imposition of a centralized curriculum. Freedom of action was further constrained when the State wrote highly prescribed and detailed curricula in all areas and then imposed the EQAO testing regime to monitor the levels of literacy and numeracy as a symbol of its success.

Neither of these Authoritarian directions could have been accomplished without the advent of modern computing power or communications technologies. The policing of both areas continues to grow in intensity both through the authority vested in the Minister under Section 11.1 of the Education Act, the imposition of the Operational Reviews Initiative and the very decision to launch this “Modernization” of Governance commission.

Is it any wonder then, that it has been the largest boards formerly, with the greatest fiscal autonomy, have been the ones to rebel against this new level of Authority?

If there is no freedom of action, what happens to freedom of thought? How is a district school board to act when, as a group, in response to the next generation of parents for a more liberal, collaborative, teacher moderated, and individual learner focused education, the habits of an Authoritarian regime have become entrenched at the State level?

The question is asked, “What are the appropriate roles and responsibilities of: the board; the Chair, individual trustees and the Director of Education?” The short answer is that the Central authority has told us all what to do.

The bottom line is the board can have the grandest mission statement in the world but it cannot create a goal that deviates from the goal of the central Authority. A board must improve its test scores in numeracy and literacy; it must close the gap between the highest and lowest scoring cohorts and it must bring the successful rate of graduation closer to 100%. To achieve those goals it has no choice; its “Strategic Plan” strategies must align with those of the State.  The problem is the state has no defined mission, goal or strategic plan statement of its own. It simply pushes and funds a number of independent initiatives.

So what is the role of the chair? Basically all that is left is to run a good meeting according to the Board’s procedural by-laws under some Rules of Order; to assist the Director in setting the board meeting agenda; to manage the decorum of the trustees during meetings; to speak on behalf of the board publicly and to, once a year, write the performance review report of the director of education.

And what of an individual trustee? To behave at board meetings, and not ask too many questions, to annually approve the budget and those other items as defined in the Education Act; to pass on complaints or inquiries from constituents to the proper level of authority according the appropriate policy and procedure; to review on a cyclical basis all policies but not procedures; to communicate with the electors in as many ways as possible without in some rural instances any budget; to maintain the confidentiality of business in closed-session; to hire only the director of education and finally to work towards and exhibit a high level of trust in and respect for the director is a short list of a trustees duties when sitting as a member of the board.

So should directors of education have a dual reporting relationship ‐ to the board and to the Minister? In a word NO! There is no need, as boards no longer have any ability to establish a mandate which conflicts with the mandates from the Minister.

Even when the directors did have a dual mandate, the director chose for obvious reasons to support the decision of the local board.

To be quite frank, compared to the era when boards of education had taxing ability, today’s directors have become master managers. In today’s Authority constrained milieu, that is the kind of leadership which has been imposed upon them. At one time innovation and new directions in education moved from large urban boards to the Ministry. This was particularly true of the Toronto Public Board between 1850 and 1950. From the 50’s to the 80’s this leadership was challenged by the rapid growth and vigour of the suburban boards of North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke.

Today’s director creates and manages a large organization under a board approved strategic plan, and through a management or “Board Improvement Plan”. It is information on the implementation of this plan by which the director keeps the board of trustees informed and ideally the public informed. In addition it is the criteria by which the trustees evaluate the director and adjust the Board’s strategic plan.

So what has happened to leadership in education in Ontario during the 1st decade of the 21st Century?  In effect it has gravitated to a few elites in the government of Ontario. Those elites tell the Minister what her government believes the majority of citizens want. Polling, focus groups, academic research, various lobbyists and international trends from other countries all contribute to the mix. Little if any innovation at the classroom or grass roots level makes it through all these filters to become a “Provincial” initiative..

Don Tapscott, in his most recent book Grown Up Digital: how the net generation is changing your world predicts a coming conflict between the current methods and trends in education from this emerging generation. I think he is likely correct. I do not see local school boards being in a position to respond to this coming challenge. It will have to be directed where the power lies, at the Provincial level.

The question the commission must ask is: have we come to the end of the road for the “elected” school trustee. A school board is no longer the autonomous body it once was. It now functions no differently than your locally appointed hospital board or a myriad of other government financed boards such as Children and Family Services to name just one.

Tomorrow, Discussion Two: Identifying Effective Governance practices

The above commentary is the personal opinion of John Borst and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Spiritans, who sponsor the site, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association  (OCSTA) or the Northwest Catholic District School Board, both of which, he is a member.

Discussion 2: Identifying Effective Governance Practices

Discussion 3: Supporting School Board Leaders

Discussion 4: Strengthening School Board Accountability

Bookmark It

Hide Sites