CAQ's plan to reform school boards will include exceptions for English system

The Coalition Avenir Québec's plan to reform the province's school boards will include exceptions for the province's English community, a government source has told CBC News.

The CAQ government is expected to table the legislation next month.

According to the source, the structure of the boards won't stay exactly the same but services and rights will be maintained in accordance with the Canadian Charter's provisions around minority language rights.

Under the new system, elections will remain in place for anglophone school boards and parents and members of the community will be elected.

There will not, however, be board commissioners and school boards will have a different name, according to the source.

The new system could be similar to the one in place in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Yukon, where francophone school boards were kept in place for the French-speaking minority, while the English boards were abolished.

Members of Quebec's English community had previously raised concerns abolishing school boards would infringe on their minority rights. 

On Tuesday, the English Montreal School Board held a news conference outlining its plans to fight such changes in court. 

"School boards, and the multi-faceted role that they play, [are] extremely important for our minority community," EMSB chair Angela Mancini said.

In response, Education Minister Jean-François Roberge said the English community would be "pleasantly surprised" by the legislation. 

"We will respect the rights of the English-speaking community, that's for sure," he said.

"Since the beginning we have been working on this bill, and we are writing it so that all the rights of the charter are respected."