School boards an election issue

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

Action démocratique du Québec leader Mario Dumont’s promise to abolish school boards if his party forms the next provincial government is irresponsible and poorly thought out, said Lester B. Pearson School Board chairman Marcus Tabachnick.

“(Dumont) didn’t do his homework on this one,” Tabachnick said. “This was clearly a situation where he was trying to make headlines in the election campaign.”

While on a campaign stop in the Saguenay region earlier this month, Dumont said school boards are bloated and suck up education dollars that could be used in the classroom.

“The administrative costs are going up at a much bigger pace than the investment in the children, in the classes,” the ADQ leader stated.

Whatever school boards now handle could be run by others, Dumont said. School boards currently handle tasks such as payroll that could easily be outsourced to countries such as India, where labour costs are low. Local municipal governments could take over responsibilities such as maintaining schools grounds and snow removal. Regional education directors could assume the tasks of buying educational materials and hiring staff, he added.

Tabachnick said Dumont has no idea how he’s going to go about saving Quebecers’ tax dollars that school boards now manage.

“We hear about these supposed savings, but he has no idea where the money’s going to come from. Governing boards handle a lot of things relating to the school environment and provide guidance, but school boards take care of the big issues,” he said.

Those big issues include staffing, maintenance, payroll and the responsibility of building and closing schools where the population changes mandate it, Tabachnick added.

“In order to make the system work well, frequently schools must share services in order to get access to some of them,” Tabachnick said. “If you end up doing that, you’ll have huge disparities in what the schools can offer. Some will be brimming with luxuries and others will have to scrape by with the absolute bare minimum,” he said.“That’s the kind of thing that (Dumont) never even talked about. What steps would be taken to protect the small schools, the last school in the village.”

The ADQ’s candidate in Robert Baldwin, Jean Lecavalier, who works for Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys, said he is in “complete agreement” with Dumont’s idea. “I back our program 100 per cent,” he said, offering no further insight.

Local Liberal candidates teed off on the proposal, saying the abolition of yet another English-language community institution would further marginalize the anglophone population in Quebec.

Jacques Cartier incumbent Geoff Kelley said abolishing school boards would discount the historic role they have played in Quebec’s English-speaking community. “Local control and management of our schools is a vital component of our education system and our protection of minority rights,” he said. “Our school boards are here to stay.”

Even the Parti Québécois slammed the notion; Marquette PQ candidate Daniel Hurteau, who sits as a commissioner of the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board, said Dumont’s idea has no credibility. “It makes no sense,” he said. “It’s very clear to me that these boards put the education of the students first, whereas if left up to the municipalities, it might not.”