É«É«À²

Sprawling school boards that were designed centuries ago still control every aspect of every school. Those boards are governed, in turn, by little-known trustees who handily win elections that the vast majority of Ontarians never participate in.

On paper, the system boasts of democratic accountability and efficiency. In reality, our school boards are burdened by bureaucratic bloat, but also weighed down by political dabbling and meddling.

In changing times, time for change. Big changes.

I’ve long believed that trustees are outdated and should be phased out — and restated that argument in my previous column. Previous Liberal governments and the NDP opposition have stood by trustees loyally, while the current Progressive Conservative government now says it is considering the idea.

But the PC government — and all political parties — should go one step further to faithfully reflect the public they serve. The sprawling and unwieldy school boards that trustees purport to govern should also be phased out, because they are increasingly ungovernable and unaccountable.

Eliminating all boards in Ontario, by making schools directly accountable to the Ministry of Education — which already calls most of the shots — would also address the (white) elephant in the room: Separate Catholic school boards would be phased out, along with the public boards, in French and English.

A decade ago, public opinion was divided down the middle on the question of maintaining a separate religious system. I didn’t see the point in risking social divisions in the absence of societal consensus, and wrote that rather than force the issue we should let the passage of time work its magic.

Public opinion has changed over time, and so has mine. A strong majority of Ontarians now believe separate schools should be eliminated.

Years ago I was unpersuaded that the savings from amalgamation were significant. Separate and public school boards were rapidly consolidating and co-operating, by closing unneeded schools and sharing resources.

Now, many of those needed efficiencies have already been achieved. But the need for additional savings continues to be felt urgently — and cannot be realized with four school boards doing much the same thing while defending their own bureaucracy (and theocracy in the case of Catholic boards that still drag their feet on LGBTQ issues).

Money that goes into the duplication of the past should be reallocated into the opportunities of the future. Energy that is wasted on the divisions of the past should be repurposed into finding common ground over shared challenges.

How did we get here?

Ontario’s system of trustees dates from 1807, when they were the first — and only — order of democratic government to be elected in this province. Back then, there were no MPs, MPPs or municipal councillors to do the heavy lifting of raising taxes and building schools.

Today, when less than a third of voters — or sometimes barely a tenth — turn out for trustee elections, educational democracy is dysfunctional and accountability is illusory. Decades ago, trustees lost the power to raise revenues by setting taxes, which led to an erosion in the fiscal discipline to balance budgets.

That’s one reason why so many school boards — in É«É«À² and across the province — have been taken over by Education Minister Paul Calandra this year, and by other ministers from other parties in the past. Trustees don’t raise money, they just spend it — and overspend by running up deficits while blaming the province for underfunding.

Trustees have since been superseded by municipal councillors, provincial and federal parliamentarians. Education is a provincial responsibility, tax revenues are collected by Queen’s Park, and the school curriculum is set by the education ministry, so why do we need trustees to create another layer?

If voters and parents have problems with the bureaucracy, let them talk to their local MPP, just as they do for any of the other ministries in government. We don’t, after all, have individual elected trustees for the justice system, nor is there any appetite to have directly elected crown prosecutors or judges as they do in overly politicized America.

There is a misconception that the so-called bargain of Confederation between Catholics and Protestants is eternally inviolable. And constitutionally intractable.

In fact, Quebec and Newfoundland long ago consolidated their unwieldy religious school boards, while Nova Scotia and P.E.I. experimented with removing trustees. Where there is a political way, there is a constitutional way — Ontario’s legislature can enact the changes without involving the other provinces.

Removing trustees is an easy first step. Centralizing school boards is a bigger move, and it might take more time to get it right, but it is a change whose time has come.

Eliminating the province’s school boards — in both religions and languages — would put to rest the constitutional anachronism and political anomaly of Ontario’s outdated duality. By doing so, the governing Tories — or any of the opposition parties looking for a way to reconnect with voters — could demonstrate pluralism without sectarianism.