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Modernizing School Board Governance Gord Kerr, M. Ed.In November, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne announced the creation of a Governance Review Committee to begin the work of modernizing school board governance in Ontario. This is a priority identified within the government’s roadmap for public education entitled “Energizing Ontario Education” which was published last winter. The modernization of school board governance is long overdue. An example that the Minister highlighted in her letter to all school boards demonstrates this point very well. Within the Education Act, there remains language today that refers to a board’s powers to erect fences, establish cadet corps and purchase milk for students, yet it does not clearly define a board’s accountability to improve student achievement. The mandate of this new committee will be to: ¨ Recommend ways to modernize and clarify in the Education Act the duties, powers and accountabilities of school boards, chairs, individual trustees, and directors of education, while reinforcing the relationship between elected officials as a group and the director of education as sole employee accountable to the board. ¨ Identify and recommend effective practices in governance applicable to the education sector including: o Codes of conduct for trustees, enforceable at the provincial or board level o Audit committees with external members ¨ Propose an appropriate long term capacity building program for trustees ¨ Recommend, after consultation with trustee associations, appropriate content and format of provincial interest regulations designed to ensure that a board achieves student outcomes specified in the regulation, such as improved literacy and numeracy and graduation rates. A solid basis for this review exists within one of the reports released by the Education Improvement Commission in the late 90’s. The Road Ahead II – A Report on the Role of School Boards and Trustees was released in December of 1997 following a broad provincial consultation. The EIC developed a series of recommendations to bring clarity and improvement to the school board governance model, although few (if any) found their way into provincial regulations at the time. Many of those recommendations have withstood the test of time and remain relevant to this discussion today. To download the report, click here. In 2006, Peter Hennessy released a book entitled From Student to Citizen, A Community-Based Vision for Democracy, in which he traces the development and evolution of the politics and governance of Ontario’s system of school boards. Mr. Hennessy is a former high school teacher and principal and a retired Queen’s University professor of education. This provides worthwhile reading for those interested in helping to chart the course forward. A consultation process will take place over the next few months. The committee is expected to provide its recommendations by the end of winter 2009. Watch for information about the consultation process as it had not been confirmed at time of press. Why is this important? Sound governance is key to improving the outcomes of any organization, particularly one as large and distributed as the education system in a province the size of Ontario. Modernizing the governance model for Ontario’s system of school boards provides the opportunity to bring forward improvements in direction, role clarity, capacity building and the use of data and results to monitor progress on student success and the factors contributing to student success. This is another essential building block for improving public education in Ontario. Gord Kerr continues to research practical methods for advancing parent involvement and engagement, now from the perspective of a public school trustee. For more information, please visit www.schoolcouncils.net © 2008 Ontario School Council Support Centre. |
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