Commissioners should still choose chairman

A move by the Quebec government to allow school-board chairmen to be elected directly by the general population, rather than chosen by elected commissioners has been lauded by some as good for democracy. We don't necessarily agree. Quick. Name your local school-board commissioner. If you were able to name a name off the top of your head, good for you. Most people can't, and aren't all that concerned with it.

That's why electing the chairman from among the elected commissioners remains a good idea. The people in the council chamber are a lot better placed to know whether or not someone can handle the pressures of chairing the board. It's a tradition that is as old as boards of directors and Robert's Rules of Order themselves.

Frankly, we don't feel all that comfortable with opening up the chairman post to be voted on by the general public.

First, the chairman would ostensibly be elected by a general public that knows nothing about them and would be in essence, boiling an election down to who has the most cash to lay out for signage – an idea that runs counter to the entire notion of democracy. Why?

Second, it also runs counter to the very notion that a school board is accountable at the most local of levels – the neighbourhood. School-board candidates getting the vote out in their district and neighbourhood is mobilization, but a chairman candidate from say, Vaudreuil-Dorion, can get a large portion of voters to cast ballots in their name and gain control of the board based on no mandate from the rest of the larger region. That's also perversion of democracy.

In 1998, when the province reorganized school boards along linguistic lines, 53 per cent of eligible voters turned out to cast ballots for the first Lester B. Pearson School Board vote. These days, voter turnout for local school-board elections is pitiful – even though it's the only English institutions left in Quebec, and anglophones seem to be content to ignore it -- and as a result, we get pathetic numbers like 12 and 13 per cent of the population casting ballots for the folks who control a $200 million budget made up of your tax dollars. At the very least, visit the board's website and acquaint yourself with your local board representative – they'll be running for re-election in just a few short months. It's your money. Get informed.