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3.3 What Is Lost When We Surrender Local Democracy · Public Good

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Justin Fraser.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Shannon Moore.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: And this is Public Good on the Prairies.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: In this episode, we explore why locally elected school boards matter.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Although this is a podcast focused on the Prairie Provinces,
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: we consider how recent actions by the Ontario government to
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: assert control over school boards... eliminate local voice, and move
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: towards centralization, serve as a warning about what is lost
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: when we surrender local democracy. Bill 33, Ontario's Supporting Children
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: and Students Act, expands the Education Minister's power to investigate, direct,
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: and in certain circumstances, take control of school boards, significantly
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: increasing provincial oversight of their finances, governance, and operations. We
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: consider how moves to centralize or eradicate school boards advances
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: neoliberal agendas of marketization and privatization and how this results
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: in students being viewed as budget lines. We consider how
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: the loss of local governments impacts equity and inclusion, including
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: the implications of weakening the local governance structures that communities
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: have used to address systemic racism and advocates for students
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: with the greatest needs. Ultimately, this episode asks not only
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: what we risk losing when school boards disappear, but what
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: it would take to strengthen local democratic governance and reimagine
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: school boards as institutions that serve the public good.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Our guest today, Sachin Maharaj, is an assistant professor of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: His research, which focuses on student phone use in schools,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the work of school boards, districts, teacher unions, and the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Equity Implications of School Choice has been published in Critical Education,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Education Policy Analysis Archives, Leadership and Policy in Schools, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy. Professor Maharaj
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: is also a contributor to the Toronto Star and regularly
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: appears in media outlets like CBC, CTV, Al Jazeera, Maclean's,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and TVO. His current research projects examine anti-racist school district
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: reform's and the implementation of policies to restrict student cell
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: phone use in schools.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Sachin Maharaj, welcome to Public Good on the Prairies.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Glad to be here.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to start.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Off with a bit of a softball question, but.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe not, who knows.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: What prompted your interest in researching and writing about school boards?
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: Well, when I was a graduate student, I actually got
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: involved in helping to run a school board election campaign
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: in Toronto. So someone I knew was running for school
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: board and asked if I could help out building some
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: of this platform and that sort of thing. And it
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: was only really when I got involved in that campaign
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: that I started to become more aware of what school
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: boards and school board members actually do and the influence
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: that And the difference they can make, for better or
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: for worse, kind of at schools at the local level.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: And so after that experience, that led me to look
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: into some of the research. And then I found that
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: compared to other aspects of leadership, like school principals or
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: superintendents and that sort of thing, the leadership of school
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: board members was something that didn't typically receive a lot
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: of research attention. And so that led me to want
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: to do some work in that area.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: In their piece, Why Strong Manitoba School Boards Matter, Henley
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and Young write, quote, boards provide the vehicle through which
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: local issues such as special programming or school closures can
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: be addressed locally by people who are likely to have
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: both an awareness of the details of the context and
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: a stake in the outcome in a way difficult to
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: imagine at the provincial, political, or bureaucratic levels, end quote.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: How would you explain to people why locally elected school
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: boards matter?
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Well, local school boards, they're this intermediate level of governance
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: where you have the provincial government on one hand, and
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: then you have schools on the other hand. And school
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: boards are the body that kind of coordinates the activities
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: that connect the two. In any large province, whether it's
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: geographically diverse, large or they just have lots of people,
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: it's very difficult to manage all of that from the
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: seat of the provincial government, from the provincial capital. Like
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: in Manitoba's case, I think you have something like close
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: to 700 schools or something like that. And so that's
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: a big school system to just manage centrally, right? And
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: in the case of Ontario, we have close to 5,000
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: schools And so you need this kind of intermediary level
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: of governance and administration to help kind of coordinate those activities.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: So a provincial government could have a policy with respect
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: to special education programming, but how that actually works out
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: in the classroom is kind of determined by school boards.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: I think it's important to note that across the country, teachers,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: aren't directly employed by the provincial government. They're employed by
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: their local school board. So that's who they're hired by.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: That's who they're receiving direction from, who they're accountable to.
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: That's the training they receive, the guidance they receive. All
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: of that sort of stuff is determined at the local level.
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  Speaker 4: And so in terms of determining what actually happens in classrooms,
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: school boards play an important role.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: This podcast is called Public Good. So how do school
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: boards help us focus on the public good and community
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: rather than just purely individual interests in education?
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. So in provinces that have
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: either gotten rid of school boards or sought to diminish
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: the influence of school boards, I think there's this idea
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: that maybe they're not necessary. These things can just be
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: figured out at the school level because, you know, schools
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: have parent councils, school community councils. If someone has an
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: issue with their child, they can raise it with the school.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: But what school boards do is kind of take a
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: collective look at what's happening in schools and what are
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: kind of the systematic issues. So let's say you're a
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: parent and you're dealing with some issue with your child.
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  Speaker 4: Maybe there's issues of discrimination, racism, or maybe they're a
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: student with special education needs who are not having their
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: needs met at the school. So you might raise that issue,
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: but you don't really have a sense of like, is
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: this something that's just happening to my child or are
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: there broader issues and dynamics at play? And that's really
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: where the school board comes in because they can take
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: a system level look at what's happening and figure out,
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: do we need some sort of broader collective responses to
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: address these issues in a way that an individual parent
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: or even a school counsel can't really do because they
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: don't have that vantage point in that context.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: We're going to talk a little bit about Ontario, even
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: though this is called Public Good on the Prairies. But
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: I think across provincial contexts, we can learn from one another.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: And Ontario is really making strong efforts right now to
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: undermine local democracy, to centralize, which I think is a
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: rather polite word. And they've come up with Bill 33, which,
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: of course, they've put the words Supporting Children and Students Act.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: I wondered if you could tell listeners outside of Ontario
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: a little bit about Bill 33.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: So as you mentioned, part of the goal of Bill
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: 33 is to centralize even more power in the hands
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: of the provincial government. Now I should mention that this
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: trend towards centralization is something that's been happening for several
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: decades now, both in Ontario and provinces across the country,
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: but this just takes it even further. The Minister of Education,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: prior to introducing this bill, had used very openly about
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: eliminating elected school boards entirely, similar to what they've done
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: in most of Quebec and in Nova Scotia as well.
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  Speaker 4: But what this does is essentially without... getting rid of
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: trustees on paper has eliminated most of their authority and
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: decision-making power. And it's done this with a goal to
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: running schools and school boards more like businesses. So prior
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: to this legislation, the head of school boards used to
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: be called directors of education, and they were required to
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: have a teaching background. And so the typical career path
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: would have been You become a teacher, then you become
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: a school administrator, and then you kind of work your
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: way up to an area superintendent. And then eventually you
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: might become a director of education. Now that position has
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: been eliminated. They've been replaced by a new position titled
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: chief executive officer. And that's not a coincidence because instead
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: of having, instead of being required to have a teaching background,
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  Speaker 4: these new CEOs are required basically to have a business
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: or a finance background because part of their primary objectives
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: is around active resource allocation. And so this new CEO position,
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  Speaker 4: what it does is it takes a lot of the
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: authority and decision-making that were away from elected trustees. So
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: for example, the board of trustees used to be the
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: ones that developed the budgets for school boards to sign it.
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  Speaker 4: deciding which money was going to be spent where. Now
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  Speaker 4: all of that decision making is in the hands of
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: the CEO. The trustees are now just expected to perform
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: an advisory function. So the CEO presents the budget. The
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: trustees can indicate whether they agree or disagree with the budget.
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  Speaker 4: If they don't agree, then it's referred to the minister
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: of education who kind of has the final say. So
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  Speaker 4: trustees don't really have any independent ability to determine how
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: school boards are spending money and what the priorities are.
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  Speaker 4: So that's really kind of, strip them of much of
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: what they do. The other thing, the other big change
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: is around collective bargaining. So the board of trustees used
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: to negotiate collective agreements at the local level with the
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: teacher unions. Now the CEOs are the ones going to
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: be doing that and ratifying those agreements. At the provincial level,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: the school boards association used to negotiate and ratify collective
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: agreements we kind of have this two-tiered collective bargaining system.
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: Now the group of CEOs collectively do that as well.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: So basically what's happened is although trustees still exist on paper,
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: in practice, they don't really have very much authority at all.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: And you're seeing that reflected in the upcoming round of
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: provincial elections. So we have elections in the fall, nominations
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  Speaker 4: already had to be filed and what What we're finding
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  Speaker 4: is that there are much fewer people who are putting
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: their name forward to become trustees, many, many more acclamations
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: and that sort of thing, which is not surprising given
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: the diminished role. So it's a way effectively to have
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: gotten rid of the trustees and the functions they perform
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: while still purporting to keep them kind of on paper.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Can I ask a follow-up in regards to that?
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Obviously, you know a little bit about how Manitoba tried
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: to pass Bill 64, and there was a lot of
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: public backlash. I'm just wondering if you could speak to
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: how has the public responded to this before we talk.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: About how the government's used this bill a little bit already?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, there have been groups of parents and community
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: organizations that have come out against these changes. I mean,
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: much more forcefully when they were first introduced, but I
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: think it's important to note that there was a lead
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: up to this. And so prior to this happening, there
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: was a bunch of other things that happened. So several
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: large school boards in the province were placed under provincial supervision.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Prior to that happening, there was previous legislation that again,
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: circumscribed the role of trustees. So we've kind of had
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: this slow Well, I mean, not that slow, but sort
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: of a slow moving shift in this direction for quite
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: a while now. So I think when the legislation was introduced,
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: the education minister framed it. Oh, I heard a lot
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: of people saying they don't want to get rid of trustees. Well,
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: I've kept trustees. And so it was a way, I think,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: to try to thread the public relations needle of getting
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: rid of local education democracy while maybe not appearing that
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: way on the surface. Mm hmm.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Furthering the notion of centralization that you just talked about
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: in Ontario, the Minister of Ed has now taken over
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the supervision of eight school boards. I think it's eight
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: last that we've checked. And these eight boards, they were
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: cited for financial mismanagement, deficits, depleted reserves, governance or leadership failures.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And so this is a really leading question. But how
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: is taking over school boards due to, quote, financial mismanagement,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: while also underfunding and defunding schools?
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: How is that bit of a setup? Yeah, I mean,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: I think all of that, it's pretty evident now that
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: all of that was just a pretext. So what happened
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: was there were a couple of high profile incidents where
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: school boards had done some maybe questionable things. So one
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: of them was some school board members went on a
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: trip to Italy and they were looking at art, that
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. Another one that actually didn't involve school
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: board members at all. It was kind of the senior
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: staff went on this uh leadership sort of retreat to
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: the rogers center like where the blue jays play for
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: a couple days and that sort of thing and so
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: that was it was those incidents were used to paint
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: this picture that we have these out of control school
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: boards that are sort of wasting all this money although
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: when you look at what the amounts of money were
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: like we spend about 30 billion dollars in education in
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: ontario like it's you know point zero zero zero zero
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: zero something of a percent so these aren't these aren't
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: um large numbers in the grand scheme of things. But
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: it was used to paint this picture that there are
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: just these out of control school boards. So what's interesting,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: what happened was a couple of things. One is the
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: education minister ordered audits into several four different school boards.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: And they were accused publicly of financial mismanagement. But what
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: those audits found was that there wasn't really any financial
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: mismanagement or wasteful spending, but school boards were having to
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: grapple with expenses that were far greater than the amounts
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: they were receiving from the province. As you said, Justin,
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: that they were being underfunded. Then the education minister threatened
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: several school boards saying, if you can't balance your budgets,
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: then they will be taken over. Those school boards did
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: balance their budgets. They ended up making cuts to balance
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: their budgets, but then they were taken over anyway. And
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: so I think when you see that in combination with
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: what the audits revealed, you kind of get the sense
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: that all of this was just a pretext to take
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: over these boards and exert greater control over them. Subsequent
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: reporting by the CBC found that around two-thirds of boards
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: across the province were either in deficit or very near
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: to it, like running basically right near to the line.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: And so what that suggests is that it's really underfunding
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: that was at play here. This isn't a case of
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: financial mismanagement. It's school boards grappling with structural issues. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: this was further supported later by even the Financial Accountability
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: Office of Ontario. So all the kind of auditor generals
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: look into this have found that the per pupil funding
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: that school boards were receiving were at the lowest level
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: they'd been in a decade. And so, yeah, as you say,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: accusing school boards of financial mismanagement in a context where
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: they've been chronically underfunded. Yeah, it shows that all of this,
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: I think, was really just a bad faith exercise.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I also think the interesting part is, I mean, we
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: all heard those stories in Manitoba. We heard something about gum,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: I think was one of the stories that was widely told,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the art purchasing widely told. I mean, the ways in
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: which the vilification of school boards are trying to state
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: that they're useless or waste money. I mean, that spread
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: across Canada very quickly. And yet we don't get the
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: stories about underfunding and defunding. We don't get the stories
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: about your research and the importance of local democracy and
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: the consequences of but we do get the point whatever
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: percent of school board budgets were used in ways that
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: they shouldn't have been, right?
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Those are the stories that we hear about.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean, we actually have a history of
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: this in Ontario. So the last time we had a
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: conservative government in power that was putting through kind of
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: these dramatic changes to the education system was back in
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: the late 90s, early 2000s. And at the time, the
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: education minister was caught on tape saying, that the government,
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: their strategy was to quote, create a crisis in order to,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: you know, build public support to drive through these changes.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: And so I think you're seeing a kind of rerun
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: of that, of that.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And I appreciate how you talk about this being a
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: bunch of pretext and a bad faith argument at times.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Shannon just highlighted a few minutes ago, but back in 2021,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Manitoba's bill 64 was met with a significant backlash. And
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons I think for, for this resistance
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: was because Bill 64 proposed to outright eliminate elected school boards.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: And you've talked a little bit in our conversation already
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that what's going on in Ontario has been going on
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: for a few decades now. And so do you see
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Ontario's more incremental approach to expanding provincial control over school
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: boards as a deliberate strategy? And if so, why and how?
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think the government here actually learned from
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: the experience in Manitoba. So Had it been presented as
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: this dramatic change all happening at once, I think there
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: would have been much more sustained resistance, whereas the way
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: that this was done slowly, first by taking over the
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: school boards, then by introducing this legislation that keeps trustees
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: but strips them of much of their power, it muted
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: some of that backlash. Now, there has been, as I mentioned, parents,
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: community groups that have protested, spoken out against these changes
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: and that sort of thing, but I think it would
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: have been even much more widespread had they gone the
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: route that Manitoba had pursued, which is probably why they
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: chose the path that we did.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Manitoba said the quiet thing out loud, which was
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: actually maybe beneficial for Manitobans. And what we saw was
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: rural and urban parents and communities coming together in response
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: in really awesome ways. As a new Manitoban at the time,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: I was really heartened to see the political protest. Manitoba
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: really lived up to its labor roots in some of
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: the responses that we saw. And even I actually thought,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know what my co-host would think, but I
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: actually think the lawn signs, as environmentally unfriendly as they were,
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: they were such an excellent way of You know, the
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Internet couldn't tell you what the population thought about an issue.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: You actually visibly looked outside and saw all the kill
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: bill signs on people's lawns.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And so it was a way that we couldn't.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Be lied to by social media about a broad support
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: either way. It's like, I can see it with my
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: own eyes. So I don't know how we can do
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: lawn signs in a more environmentally friendly way. But if
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: this pops up again in Manitoba, which I suspect it will,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: it's not like they've just said, oh, we want to
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: centralize and it didn't work. We're going to let it go.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: We've seen it creeping back in. So in that you said,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Ontario learned a little bit from Manitoba. What do you
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: think Manitoba and the Prairie provinces more broadly can learn
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: about what's going on in Ontario right now?
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: You always need to keep an eye on kind of
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: what the direction of the policies are and what the
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: intentions behind them possibly could be. And this is where
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the undermining of school boards sort of comes into play.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Like part of the, the power of public school boards
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: is that they're supposed to operate in the public eye.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: So when they're making decisions, you know, they're having school
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: board meetings, they're open to the public. People can come,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: they can ask questions, they can push back. Members of
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: the media can attend, right? And report on them. And
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: that helps to hold the school system accountable. Whereas in
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: the absence of this, and you've seen this in the
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: school boards that have been placed under provincial supervision, all
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: of that is gone. And so decisions that are being made,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: nobody has any idea how they were made, why they
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: were made, if they disagree, who they can talk to.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: And so I would say that the precursor to the
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: centralization we're seeing now really was the takeover of these
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: school boards and the elimination of that. And then getting
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: people used to not having those outlets. It's kind of
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: just like, oh, well, I guess there's nothing I can
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: do about this. And so there's this kind of, helplessness
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: that people become sort of accustomed to or trained to.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: So I would say people in Manitoba in the prairies
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: need to, and people, especially who care about public education
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: need to keep a vigilant eye of these moves. Cause
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: I would, I would imagine people who would like to
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: go in this direction will then learn from the Ontario
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: government and maybe try to adopt some of those more
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: incremental strategies. It's helpful.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: That you just said that school boards are supposed to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: operate in the public eye, they're supposed to be accountable
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: to the public, they're supposed to serve the public interest.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Looking to Ontario, how do these school board takeovers potentially
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: perpetuate neoliberal interests, including the marketization and privatization of public schools?
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: Well, they just make the operation of school systems much
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: more opaque. It makes it easier for private interests to
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: infiltrate the school system because no one's really keeping an
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: eye on where the money is being spent, right? Who's involved?
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: You can't ask questions. You sort of can't push back.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: There's sort of no one to turn to or no
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: one to talk to. And so there are people in
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Ontario too who think that what's happening is similar to
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: what happened in BC about a decade and a bit ago,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: where there was this undermining of the public system. And
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: many people in that province felt that part of the
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: goal was that was to essentially increase the role of
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: private schools in the system. So drive people away from
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: the public system into private schools. And that's what essentially happened.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: If you look at private school enrollments during that time,
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: they shot up quite significantly in BC. And now that
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: system is basically entrenched in that province. And so A
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: lot of people feel that's where Ontario could be headed
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: with the chronic underfunding and sort of the issues there
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: driving more people into the private system. I mean, in
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: addition to the kind of private interests infiltrating the public
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: system itself.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I have two follow ups.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Number one, in BC, they love to call it independent
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: schools instead of private schools, a way to sanitize the
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: notion that they're private schools.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: It's just a selling. I guess that's more of a comment.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: But there's been a lot of discussion in the media
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: about the sale of public lands. So not just the
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: opaqueness of the public school ideal says public governance in public.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: And that's a problem.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: But one of the ways in which marketization and privatization
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: is through the sale of public lands. Could you tell
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: folks a little bit about that?
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a big issue, particularly in Toronto. So
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: the Toronto District School Board, which is the largest district
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: in the province, is actually one of the largest landowners
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: in the province as well. So in addition to the
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: school plants themselves, they own lots of other sort of
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: property all over the city. And as there's been school consolidation,
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: school closures, you know, some declining enrollment, there's a question of,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: so what do we do with all that land?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: And a lot of this is sitting on like really
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: prime real estate in the city now. So like a
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: school I used to teach at, it like overlooks the
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: Don Valley in the city. It's right next to a
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: subway stop. And like, if that was turned over to
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: private development, oh my God, like that would be worth,
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: I don't even know how much money. And so the
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: question is, so what do we do with all of
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: that now? In the past, as I mentioned, these are
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: decisions that would take place in public to a certain degree, right?
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: Like plans would be presented, people would be able to comment,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: people would be able to ask questions, push back, all
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: that sort of stuff. And now all of that is gone.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: And once that land is sort of sold and turned
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: into other uses, there's no really getting them back, right?
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: And schools and the land that they own, they're often...
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: the hubs of neighborhoods, right? They're the kind of center
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: pieces where people can come together. Even if you don't
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: have kids in the school, you might use like the
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: green space, you know, associated with it, or they might
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: have community events there. That might be where you go
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: to vote that, right? It's kind of these kind of
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: center pieces that connect communities. And so if that is
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: kind of sold off or turned over to private interest,
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: that's That's not coming back. That's kind of gone forever.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: And so that's why I think it's really important, just
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: even from the strength of our local communities to have
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: strong public school boards that are operating.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And the sale of the lands is emblematic of all
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: the consequences that would result with other.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Selling off of.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the more literal selling off of land
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: and the consequences to the public good and the common
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: good and the spaces for that.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And once it's gone, we're not going to get back
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: all of those sorts of things.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: But you could take that argument, put it to all
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: the other elements of if we lose local democracy, if
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: we lose, you know, a myriad of other things. I
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: wanted to turn to your co-authored piece with Vidya Shah
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: and Behan Farhadi, what a powerhouse team, by the way,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: in Conversation Canada. And you write in that piece, quote,
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: An education system that is run like a business ultimately
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: views students with the highest needs as a liability to
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: cut rather than a collective moral responsibility, end quote. It's
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: such a powerful line. And I wondered if you could
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: speak to some of those issues of equity and inclusion
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: that result from centralization or really just taking away local voice.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so when we look at why I mentioned those
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: two thirds of school boards in Ontario, why they're in
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: deficit or near to running a budget deficit. What the
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: auditor general found was that these school boards were spending
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: a lot more on special education than they received in
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: the province in particular. Because as students started coming to
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: school with more complex special education needs, meeting those needs
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: is expensive. You have to hire people. It sort of
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: takes time. But if your goal is to just kind
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: of spending, right? I mentioned the CEOs are responsible for
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: effective resource allocation. Then serving those students, instead of being
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: viewed as kind of a moral responsibility that we have
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: to our fellow community members, it's just viewed as this
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: like expensive liability that we can't afford. And so it's
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: just a different way of thinking about what we're doing
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: in schools. Because if we were just going to kind
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: of reduce the amount of spending, then we wouldn't provide
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: services to those students. I mean, we wouldn't do maybe
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: many of the things that we do in schools. The
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: one stated goal of the Ontario government was to have
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: this back to basics approach to education. And we could
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: spend way less on schools if we just want the basics, right?
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: Like if we just want sort of a basic education,
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: but I think the public wants more than that. And
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: that's been reflected in what we expect schools to do now.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: The reason we have school psychologists and child and youth
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: workers and social workers and all these other supports is
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: because we expect schools to do more than just teach
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: kids how to read and write and that sort of thing.
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: And so I think there's this real conflict here. I
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: think most members of the public want more than the
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: basics for their children, but the way our school boards
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: are currently funded and the way they're being held accountable
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: is to provide maybe just a basic education and kind
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: of ignore the needs of students that are too expensive. Yeah.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: I think the hilarity of using back to basics while
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: also using modernize as another of their favorite rhetorical tools,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: like in the same breath, sometimes in the same sentence.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: It just shows you that it's all just rhetoric. Right.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: In regards to equity.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: It's not just, you know, seeing students as a line
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: in the budget and where cuts can be made. There's
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: also a group of black trustees who have warned students.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Ontario cannot address systemic anti-Black racism while weakening the governance
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: and equity structures designed to confront it. So I wondered
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: too if you wanted to speak to the other equity
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: issues that can emerge from taking away local voice.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a big part of the research Vidya
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: and Behan and I have been doing over the last
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: several years is looking at the anti-racist work of Ontario
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: school districts and what the opportunities and challenges to that
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: work are. And a big part of it actually has
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: to do with decentralization. So Prior to even Bill 33
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: coming into play, there was other legislation that was introduced
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: a couple of years before that gave the province control
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: over the priorities of school boards. And in effect, what
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: that ended up doing was de-centering the equity and social
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: justice initiatives that several boards had previously championed. So a
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: lot of the equity and social justice work in Ontario
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: happened had been kind of pioneered by, by school boards
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: at the local level. So different school boards deciding to,
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: you know, develop an anti-black racism strategy, for example, or, um,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: creating certain groups within the school district that focus on
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: LGBTQ issues, gender-based violence, a whole host of things. A
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: lot of these came from the school board level. And
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: so when these changes were put into place, school boards
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: received the signal that this type of work is no
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: longer a priority. And so as a result, staff was
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: let go from a lot of these departments. The goals
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: with respect to these issues were removed from you know,
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: achievement improvement plans and that sort of thing. And then
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: the issue that the Black Trustees Caucus raised was that
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: the group of Black trustees from across the province would
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: come together where, again, collectively they can look at what
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: are the issues we're facing in all schools across the
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: province and what do we need to do on a
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: system-wide basis to address it. Now all of that is gone.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: You don't have an equivalent body that's able to know
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: what's going on across the province. And so all of
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: these changes have really weakened the equity and social justice initiatives.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: And I think this was pretty clear that that's what
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: part of the goal was. So prior, the previous education minister,
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: when the new legislation was put into place, had said
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: that he wanted school boards to refocus their efforts, basically
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: indicating that they had gotten too sort of focused on
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: sort of equity and social justice issues. And so That's
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: kind of led to where we are now, where those
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: concerns have taken a backseat to having more effective financial management.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Relatedly, a common thread throughout our conversations on public on
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the prairies has been how the interests of neoliberals and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: neoconservatives come together in surprising ways. So, for example, neoliberal
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: reforms attempt to diminish, centralize or eliminate elected school boards.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Neoconservative movements increasingly focus on gaining control of them through
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: elections and So why do you think that school boards
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: have become such an important political arena for these competing projects?
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And how are these two conversations of neoliberal efforts to
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: centralize school boards and neoconservative attempts to take over school boards,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: how are those connected?
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: So they're connected in the sense of like the effort
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: to centralize school boards and you have to ask the
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: question for what purpose? So I mentioned that centralizing power
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: away from school boards is a project that has been
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: happening for several decades, but different governments have used that
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: in different ways. And so when we had a more,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: I guess, progressive government compared to the current government, there
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: was actually an attempt to have schools focus on equity
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: initiatives in more consistent ways. So the previous government, for example,
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: mandated that all school boards collect data on students that's
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: disaggregated by identity. So having students, you know, identify what
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: their racial or ethnic background is, what their gender and
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: sexuality is. And then linking that to see, like, do
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: we just even know, are certain groups of students being
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: suspended at higher rates than others? Are certain groups of
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: students not achieving as well? Or maybe they're bullied more
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: or something like that. And so that was done under
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: sort of a period of increased centralization. But that is
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: a double-edged sword, right? So just as you can use
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: it for one purpose, another government can come into power
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: and use it for another purpose. And so I think
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: we see with the current government, the attempts to centralize
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: power are to actually further a neoconservative agenda. So the
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: reason that I think these large school boards like in
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Toronto and Ottawa have been taken over, as I mentioned,
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: I don't think it has anything to do with their
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: actual financial management. I think it has to do with
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: their political orientation and what they've prioritized. And some of
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: this has even been said more or less out in
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: the open as well, so that prior to being taken over,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: the education minister talked about how many members of the
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: Toronto District School Board were associated with the provincial NDP
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: party and the provincial Liberal Party and and that sort
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: of thing. If you read the conservative press, which I
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: do pretty regularly, prior to those takeovers, there was a
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: lot of calls from conservatives in Toronto, basically imploring the
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: province to take it over because they claimed it had
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: been sort of hijacked beholden to the woke agenda to
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: that effect. And so this is the thing is, as
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: you mentioned, Justin, there have been conservative attempts to take
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: over school boards, but in large urban areas, conservatives of
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: that type are basically outnumbered, right? And so their local
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: representatives tend to be much more progressive than they are.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: And that's where then these takeovers come into play because
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: then you just sidestep local democracy completely. And it's much
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: easier to then implement a conservative agenda while doing that.
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: So I think that's part of what's been driving this
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: current wave of centralization.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: That's a really interesting difference because I would say the
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: way it's manifesting in Manitoba is we're seeing more parental
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: rights folks taking over school boards. And then the general
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: populace is saying, What they're talking about on school boards
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: or in a school division that Justin used to work
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: in before he started his PhD at UBC, when he
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: was a teacher in Winnipeg, there was someone, one single
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: trustee who became the whole thing. agenda of school board
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: business for the entirety of the year. It was all
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: about this one person's racism and homophobia online. Ellen Bees
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: has written an excellent discussion of this incident in our
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: schools ourselves.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And then what.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: People do as a result is they say, what's happening
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: in school boards? It is not what I want to
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: be talking about.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I don't want to talk about book bans.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be talking about moralizing public education.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I want to be talking about under-resourced schools. I want
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: to be talking about teachers and how many teachers there
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: are in the building for each student.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Those are the things we want to talk about.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: That then becomes the motivation to centralize because they don't
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: see trustees as representing their perspective, but in a different
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: way than you're describing in Ontario. So that's interesting.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say too that we've had some of
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: those dynamics as well. So like with any... Elected body,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: you're going to get people who may be kind of
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: out of step with maybe what their constituents really want.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: So we've had elected trustees, certain ones at school board
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: that have had really homophobic or racist views and things
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: that they've said and that sort of thing. We've had
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: school board takeovers in the past on that basis. So
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: we've had school boards that have been taken over for
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: their failure to address anti-Black racism. And so, yeah, these
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: things can kind of be kind of what I was
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: saying before. These centralization efforts can be used in different
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: ways and for different purposes. And so, I mean, to
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: that point, I also don't want to romanticize what school
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: boards were like prior to the current legislation. They've had
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: several challenges and we've had problematic trustees and all that
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: sort of stuff. I guess the question is whether eliminating
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: them entirely, getting rid of local education democracy is better
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: or addresses any of those issues that we might have had.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Which leads me to my next question, because I was
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: listening to in preparation for this interview, reading your work
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: and listening to you on interviews and mainstream media, and
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: you quote Cinderella's power ballad. Justin's trying to correct me
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: and say Joni Mitchell. Justin, was it originally a Joni
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Mitchell song?
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's how I know the quote first, but
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: it's all before my time.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Shut up, you youngster.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: But the quote was, you don't know what you got
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: until it's gone. So I wondered if you could speak
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: a little bit about that idea. Yes, they may not
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: be perfect, as you've just mentioned. There are flaws with
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: local democracy. There's flaws with democracy, but that doesn't mean
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: we should just let it go. So I wondered if
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: you could tell our listeners about some of the consequences
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: of if we lose it.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: So I think, you know, a couple of things. So
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: one of the, as I previously mentioned, in the absence
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: of school boards, there really is no transparency with respect
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: to how school systems are operating, where the money is going,
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: what it's being spent on, why there's no one to
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: sort of turn to. And so the public, the news media,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: the public community's in the absence of school boards are
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: often just kept in the dark about what's sort of happening.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: And that's really concerning because in every province, education is
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: one of the largest budget items, right? We spend billions
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: of dollars, right? Next to healthcare, it's probably the biggest expense.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: And so just even if you were just kind of
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: like a local taxpayer concerned about where money is being spent,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: there's that concern. But for those that have kids in
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: the system, I mean, you might know like school systems
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: can be these big education bureaucracies that your kid can
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: just kind of get lost in, right? Like a decision
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: is made, something happens to them. And then what do you,
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: what do you do about it? You can go the
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: usual route of trying to address it through the school and,
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: you know, that may get escalated, but then somewhere along
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: the line, you might have sort of nowhere to turn to. Right.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: And so having a locally elected representative is someone you
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: can say, you can turn to from your community and say,
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: you know, I have this issue. Can you help me?
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: That person, you know, as I mentioned, they're hearing the
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: feedback and concerns from many people in the community. So
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: they have a more systematic sort of understanding of sort
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: of what's going on and then can both help you individually,
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: but also can advocate at the collective level to address
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: these issues. I think what was really telling about not
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: knowing what you have till it's gone is I mentioned
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: the Toronto District School Board is one of the boards
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: that were placed under supervision. And when shortly after this happened,
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: a few months later, I was at a community event
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: in the neighboring school board, the Durham District School Board,
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: where some trustees were talking about sort of these issues.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: And one of the startling things that they said was
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: that increasingly they were getting calls from parents in Toronto
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: because they those parents had nowhere to turn to. And
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: so they were calling trustees from the neighboring board asking
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: for help or if they could give them advice about
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: what to do. And so I think that really demonstrates
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: that when you need someone, you need someone to help you,
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: to advocate for you, and that person is no longer
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: available or there, that's when you sort of really miss it.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: And I think This is why this is such an
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: equity issue, because it's really kids from the most vulnerable
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: backgrounds who this is going to affect the most. They're
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: the ones that are being least well served by our
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: schools and need someone to advocate on their behalf. And
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: so all of this, I think, is going to just
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: further the disparities that we see in our school systems.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: You and your co-researchers have also written, and I'm going
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to quote you here, When public school is treated like
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: a commodity to be optimized rather than a fundamental right,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: it's a betrayal of the values of a system that
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: should instead center students in their learning. Although there were
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: significant challenges with school governance under the previous model, the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: solution is not to diminish local democratic control, but to
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: strengthen it. And so you've just highlighted some of the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: risks about losing school boards. So can you also speak
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: to the other side of that? More to this idea
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of not giving up on school boards and instead focusing
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: on how we might strengthen them.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So as I mentioned, school boards have been criticized
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: in the past. It's ironic because this was some of
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: this was by the current government for not doing enough
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: to address anti-Black racism, other equity issues, sort of that
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. And changes were put into place to
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: get school boards to focus more on addressing these issues.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: And we were kind of going in that direction for
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: a few years. But now, in addition to that being eliminated,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: we're just kind of eliminating the role of school boards entirely.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: And so I think, as I said in the beginning
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: of the conversation, school boards play this important intermediary role
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: between the province and local schools. And I think school
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: systems being the... the nature of them because communities are
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: so diverse with respect to geography and demographics and sort
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: of other issues in a way. people in the provincial
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: capital can't ever understand. You really need people from the
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: local community who are empowered to help serve those communities well,
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: because they're the ones that live in those communities and
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: that understand them. And I think if we want to
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: have a school system that both serves students well and
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: has public legitimacy in the sense of people trust them
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: and value them, you really need to have kind of empowered,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: effective school boards at the local level.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for that. I hope people listen
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: to this in advance of the elections that are coming
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: up in Manitoba in October, because I think you are
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: absolutely correct. It is those students that are already underserved
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: within our system who are going to be more underserved
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: if we do not have local voice to speak for them.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: I also hope people in the prairies listen and look
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: at what's happening in Ontario as a bit of a warning.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: I think your point about you know, rolling it out
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: slower and not saying the quiet part out loud is
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: something we need to look for those hidden ways in
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: which local democracy is being taken away and just be.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: More attuned to that.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: So thank you so much, Sachin Maharaj, for sharing your
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: time with us today. We really appreciate this and we
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: appreciate all the connections across Canada with public ed advocates
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: because this really isn't a fight within our provinces. This
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: is a fight across Canada for public education. Thanks.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Well, Shannon, my first thought when we were initially reaching
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: out to guests for the series of Public Ed on
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the Prairies was why on earth is Shannon asking someone
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: from Ontario to share about issues facing the prairies? I
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: kind of embodied that typical prairie defensiveness. And I was like,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: we already know Ontario is the center of Canada. We
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: don't need to hear any more about Ontario. But having
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: met Sachin a few years ago, having read lots of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: his work with some amazing folks, some public ed advocates
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: in Ontario and beyond, it was such a privilege to
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: have Sachin. And so Shannon, over to you. What struck
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you about our conversation with Sachin today?
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's funny.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: I thought you were going to ask me to defend
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: why we asked somebody from Ontario.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And I was going to say, well, you can do
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: that if you want.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: Because Sachin has the receipts, like he's doing the work
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: of school board discussions across Canada. And I also think
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: because in our public ed advocacy work alongside Sachin through
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: things like PECS and the symposium that we had in
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Ontario in 2021.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Or whatever it was.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: After that, we have had discussions about when the stuff
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: started happening with Bill 33 in Ontario, the groups that
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: he was working with reached out to us in Manitoba
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: to say like, what did you guys do in response
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: to Bill 64? So to me, it was that relationship
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: back and forth of learning from one another across borders.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: So they were at a moment where they were like,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: what can we learn from what happened in Manitoba? And
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: I think now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta are at a moment
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: where we can say, what can we learn from the
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: consequences of what's happening in Ontario and what sort of
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: struck me. And I mean, the Elementary Teachers Federation of
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Ontario has been quite outspoken against Bill 33 and they
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: made the comment, the passage of Bill 33 will not
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: be an isolated incident. It's part of a broader, deeply
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: troubling agenda to dismantle publicly funded education and hand schools
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: over to private interests. So I just think like we're
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: talking about school boards in this episode and but school
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: boards is not just about school boards, right? I mean,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: it's the publicly governed in public part of the public
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: school ideal. And as soon as you take that one
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: piece out, it has an effect on all of it.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: And so there's sort of two points in there, which
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: is we can learn from one another across provinces and
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: we should be paying attention to what's happening in the
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: other provinces because it's coming for us or it's already
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: come for us.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: And secondly, I think what's.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: Happening in Ontario right now with school boards is just
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: going to be one piece of the teardown of public
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: education more broadly.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: It's, it's amazing seeing what's happening, Ontario, to your point,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: that this is like a multi-pronged attack and that school
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: boards certainly are one piece of the puzzle from the
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Ontario government, but that it's affecting everything and that everything's interconnected.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: And to your point too, about the public school ideal,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: like those five things that we keep surfacing throughout this series.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: That those have to work together and that in the
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: same way that you lose one, that it impacts others.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: There's consequences for the others and school boards and school
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: trustees being local representative plays into that entire comprehensive public
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: school ideal. And then further to your point, how that
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: does affect the country and that there's connections to be
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: made here.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: I think I was also struck too by like his
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: discussion of the gradual way in which this has happened
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: and how that's allowed for it to happen and how
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: basically the reforms have made it so that the school
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: boards are impotent, like they actually have no power anymore.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: So then we have the problem of, you know, there
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: was already so many seats being won by acclimation for
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: school boards across Canada in the first place. Now you've
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: made it so that the position is pretty ceremonial. So
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: it's not true local governance. So then how is that
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: going to affect how many people actually bother running? In
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: a piece that Heather Gansorn did for Parkland Institute in Alberta,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: they spoke about 421 school board trustee elections. How many
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: do you think those were acclaimed of 421?
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: I have no idea.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Over half?
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: 207.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: And another six seats were left vacant.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: So like, There's already the problem across Canada of not
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of interest in school board seats or seeing
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: what the point.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Or the purpose is. Now, of course, we have people.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Taking an interest in school board seats because they see
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: it as a way of impacting what's happening in schools
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: and taking over school boards through whatever issues they have. Largely,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: we can frame that in relation to the parental rights
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: groups that are taking over. And so these are seen as...
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: you know low profile seats as Heather points out but
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: powerful and because there isn't a lot of competition in
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: them they are ripe for takeover but then oppositely in
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: Ontario now it's like people are like well why would
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: I bother because I actually don't have any power so
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know that gradual part was something I think
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: that's really important.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah There's something too that I wanted to pick up
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: on that Sachin said, and I'm curious on your take
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: on this. He talked a lot about how school boards
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: are this intermediary between schools in the province. And I
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: think this, for me anyways, this is a fundamental reason
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: that school boards are so crucial to the project of
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: public education that having a locally elected representative that understands
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: the local, the contextual issues facing the community is so important.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, This conversation that school
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: boards act as an intermediary got me thinking about my
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: role as a teacher in relation to school boards and
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: some of the consequences of our current governance structure and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: policy landscape. So I want to throw this out to
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: you in a second, and I'm curious on your take.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: As a teacher, if I have an issue or a concern,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: it's not really appropriate for me to go to the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: school board. Policy dictates that I either go to my school, admin,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: or to my union. Parents, however, reach out to their
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: their elected school trustee if they have concerns. So it's
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: this awkward governance structure where for me as a professional educator,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I can't actually have much voice or influence at the
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: school board level. Of course, teacher unions can and do
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: play an intermediary role there. And teachers elect people to
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: represent them on their union. But the role of unions
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: and school boards are fundamentally different. Like unions don't pass
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the district budget for the upcoming school year.
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: School boards do that.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: And so as a teacher, it can sometimes feel like
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: I don't have an elected official representing me on the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: school board because I'm not really allowed to approach them.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious how the design of this system, back
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to Sachin's point about school boards being an intermediary, how
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: does the design of the system potentially work to silence teachers?
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And what are the potential consequences of that? Or am
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I totally off base?
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: No, no. I think there's so many ways in which
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're just adding one more way in which
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: the professionals that work within the systems' voices are being
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: disregarded and there's no place for their voices to be heard.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: And I think if we could have had a bingo
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: card across all of these discussions that we've had over
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: the summer for Public Good on the Prairies, one of
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: them has been the ways in which the very people
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: who work in classrooms on a daily basis, the ways
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: in which their opinions are discounted in advance, the ways
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: in which they are attacked that crisis is laid on
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: their bodies like, oh, test scores are bad and it's
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: the fault of teachers and these are the reforms that
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: we need. And when teachers express their ethical concerns about
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: some of those reforms, then they are not taken seriously,
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: seen as self-interested. And so I think this is just
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: one more, if you could do a list of all
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: of the ways in which teachers' voices are silenced or
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: pushed to the side or seen as irrelevant or villainized,
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I think that... That's just one more way in the
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: list of those things.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and then to, to, to Sachin's point, you know,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: with these takeovers in Ontario, like the provincial government taking over, well,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: that's silencing all the voices, not just the voices. And
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: then in, you know, in the Prairie provinces, like the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: right wing takeover of school boards, well, that's silencing a
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: lot of people and it's, it's surfacing and including very
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: particular moralizing voices that, which these places are increasingly hotly contested,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: these school board trustee seats. We see that across the
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: prairie provinces across the country. And I think a lot
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: of this came from the states that it's coming up north.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: We see how crucial school boards are, how crucial local
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: governance is. Back to your point about Alberta and the
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: amount of seats that were, the representatives were just acclaimed
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: in those seats. I think that's changing. And at the
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: same time, I'm not sure if it's a great reason
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: that it's changing. We're fighting over, again, it's not about
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: classroom sizes and complexity or funding for schools. It's talking
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: about policies around trans and gender diverse youth.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Or rolling back those policies, for example, which is why
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: these school boards are so critical.
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: And I thought that was probably the most resonating point.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, the article that Sachin wrote with Vidya Shah
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: and Behan Farhadi about the impacts this will have on
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: equity are so important. I think everyone should read that article.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: And I think the ways in which school boards help
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: keep the focus on society over the individual is.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Really, really important.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: We're making decisions for the good of our society within
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: this group. not for the good of individual parents. And
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: what happens when we lose local governance is it adds
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: to that neoliberal feeling of everybody just needs to fight
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: for themselves and for their child.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: And so it's sort of twofold.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: It's like we're losing the very thing that continues to
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: prioritize the public good if we lose public governance and
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: we're feeding or fueling that sort of fight for oneself,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: my child's needs, my child's interests, which is actually, you know,
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: taking away from the public good as well. So that
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: one really struck me. It's just like how school boards
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: keep that societal focus.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Public school ideal. Like we talk about public accountability and
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: that's very obvious in school boards. One of the ideals
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: is also serving the public interest, not just private interest.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: And in this increasingly neoliberalized society that we're socially atomized,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: that we become these, or we're hyper individualized as well.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Every man for himself type of a thing. And how,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: school boards at their best, how can they help us
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: think collectively? How can they help us think of ourselves
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: in community with one another? In really powerful and amazing
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: ways when it comes to advocacy about the issues that
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: face specific communities. rather than just a bunch of folks
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: in a big city center making centralized decisions about communities
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: that they've never stepped foot in.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: That are now run by CEOs who are no longer educators, right?
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: So that through line from the top, we're going to take,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: it's no longer going to be an educator. That's a superintendent.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: And he went through that path of what it normally
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: used to be. You'd be a principal, then you'd be
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: a district principal, then you'd become a superintendent. But now
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: it's not even actually seen as a benefit to have
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: been an educator. Then we're eradicating school boards and all
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: of this leads to schools being run more like businesses.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: And the point that Sachin made that all of this
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: erases the needs of children as the decisions that are
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: being made, like that is not even part of the
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: equation anymore. It's dollars and cents. That is now the equation.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: And that obviously has consequences for the public good as well.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: And the title of CEO, like you say, that's corporate language.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: That's someone who makes executive decisions, who has executive power
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: about things like finance or human resources, marketing or whatever.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: And this move, the title shift from superintendent to CEO,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: it is a form of privatization.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: We need to name it as such. We're importing ideas
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: and values from the private sector into the public, into
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: public schools, so that public schools look like businesses and
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: they're run like businesses.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't want a CEO as a teacher. I
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: don't want my work to be governed by metrics like
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: efficiency and competition. That totally undermines what I think meaningful
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: teaching and learning is. And school boards have a really
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: key role to play in that.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I guess until next time.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Until next time.