ɫɫ��

But the trustees who typically deal with those issues have been stripped of their powers in a handful of the largest school boards in Ontario, representing almost one-third of the province’s two million students.

With government-appointed supervisors now running the show in ɫɫ��’s public and Catholic, Ottawa public, Dufferin-Peel Catholic and Thames Valley public school boards, it remains unclear how the deluge over the next few weeks will be handled.

Education Minister Paul Calandra said he’s told boards to ensure parents get help — but trustees aren’t so sure.

“Come September, when hundreds of calls and emails start being directed to a black hole of nothingness, parents will get the true impact of this situation,” said Markus de Domenico, chair of the ɫɫ�� Catholic District School Board, one of the five the province took over citing financial mismanagement.

“Parents’ elected voice has been undemocratically removed over a budget crisis the ministry has created, right across the province,” he said. “I’m hoping and praying — literally — that everything will run well for parents.

“I don’t want to use students and parents as a way to push a cause for my fellow trustees and myself,” he added, “but one can’t expect with 88,000 students going back to school in 200 schools across just our board alone that everything’s going to be tickety-boo. It doesn’t work that way.”

With trustees losing access to their emails or cellphones, all concerns are to be stickhandled by the supervisors or senior staffers in each board.

Calandra told the Star that the first week of school brings “a lot of challenges, and parents will have questions, and (the supervisors) have to refocus the superintendents on making sure that parent questions are being answered in the exact same way they would have been before. The fact that there might not be a trustee doesn’t matter.”

Trustees, he added, “always redirected their questions to superintendents anyway, and there should be zero tolerance for delay … So we’re going to watch that very carefully over the next number of weeks.”

Jennifer Di Francesco, who chairs the ɫɫ�� Catholic Parent Involvement Committee, has been urging a meeting with the supervisor and education minister, saying “removing (trustees) without meaningful input from and accountability to families and taxpayers demonstrates a troubling disregard for our election process, public trust and local representation.”

Parents were given an email address to contact, but that’s it, she added.

“They expect one email address to deal with all that? … Without our trustees delegating for us, advocating for us, pushing for things to get done … parents can only do so much.”

This fall, Calandra will also be ushering in Bill 33, legislation that will give the province more control over school boards, including the right to veto new school names or name changes, ensuring more transparency on expenses, and mandating school resource officers in schools where local police forces run such programs. 

Both Martha Hradowy, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, and Karen Brown, the past president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said they will be pressing the government to address working conditions for their members in advance of contract talks that will begin later next year.

“We have been hearing over and over again the rise in violence, the overheated, overcrowded classrooms, the larger class sizes … and the need for more wraparound supports, mental health support for students,” Hradowy told the Star. “Those are all things that the government is going to have to address.”

New Democrat MPP Chandra Pasma (Ottawa West-Nepean), her party’s education critic, said parents began reaching out to her office with questions in June after learning their public school board was also being taken over.

“All of a sudden, they had nowhere to go,” Pasma said, adding her office struggled to find even basic information about who to contact.

Michael Bellmore, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, said the next few weeks will be “filled with phone calls regarding bus routes from concerned parents, maybe there’s work that needs to be done in school — and in those cases, they’re going to have to call the supervisor, who may or may not” assign staff to help out. 

“It’s going to be a worrisome time for those parents, because they are not going to have that direct contact, or that advocate,” he added. 

Calandra said his ministry will also this fall look to address the teacher shortage, and is working with Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn with an eye to making changes to teacher training at university.

How to lower teacher sick leave rates, which hit about 20 days annually on average in the ɫɫ�� public board alone — a factor contributing to the shortage — will also be looked at.

Schools this year will also, for the first time, be celebrating Ontario Day on June 1 — or close to that date if it falls on a weekend — as mandated.

A memo to boards from the Education Ministry said “Ontario Day will be an instructional day to provide students with the opportunity to learn about and celebrate key milestones in Ontario’s history and the contributions Ontarians have made to Ontario and Canada’s broader social, economic, political and cultural fabric.”

Trustees will now have to attend all board and committee meetings in person “to promote and enhance accountability, transparency, and public confidence in the education system.”

But for now, ɫɫ�� Catholic board chair de Domenico said supervisors need to ensure the school year gets off to a good start.

Parents will have “I-need-something-fixed-now issues,” he noted, and they won’t be able to count on trustees who know who and where to call to get that done quickly. “I hope things go smoothly.”