Education minister curtails work of school boards

Education Minister Zach Churchill has curtailed the powers of the province's existing regional school boards while the governing Liberals draft legislation to get rid of them altogether.

In a letter sent Monday to board members and superintendents, the minister is ordering the seven boards not to strike new deals or make substantive changes to existing contracts without seeking approval first. The province's single francophone board will continue as is.

Boards must seek permission from the minister before they can make significant changes in the following areas:

• School board governance or board services.
• Transportation.
• Finance.
• Property services.
• Operations.
• Human resources.
• Programming.

The Nova Scotia government announced last week it was accepting consultant Avis Glaze's recommendation to dissolve the province's regional school boards and replace them with a single provincial advisory council. The francophone school board, Conseil scolaire acadien provincial, will remain intact.

In his letter, Churchill also told the boards they were forbidden from starting any reviews of schools with an eye to possible closures. He is also directing them to continue to work with his department in rolling out the pre-primary programs formally initiated this past fall.

In a telephone interview Monday, Churchill downplayed his move to limit the existing power of the elected boards.

"All we're doing is trying to articulate the best way that the boards can help us with the transition into a new model," he said. "Obviously ensuring that there's no major policy shifts that happen in the next little bit is important."

The letter also contains a warning against those who might want to disregard his orders: "The minister may appoint a person to carry out such responsibilities and exercise such authority of the school board as the minister determines, and in such a manner as the minister determines."

The move doesn't come as a shock to Gin Yee, the chair of the Halifax Regional School Board.

"There has to be some transition point, so there is going to be a change in the next few months," he said. "And you know it's reasonable to assume that the department wants to be in the loop if we make any significant changes. So, yeah, I'm not surprised."

But the threat to fire board members who do not follow the minister's directive is being called an "ironed-fist comment" by Hank Middleton, the president of the Nova Scotia School Boards Association. 

"We've taken some criticism and sometimes it's deserved and sometimes it isn't," he said of board members. "But these people have poured their hearts and souls into students' education and they've trudged back and forth to meetings and they've taken PD sessions and they've worked to improve student learning."

Yee said his board would continue to meet but that he expected some things on the agenda to be simply abandoned.

"We had other plans, like for example, [to] do a self-assessment," he said. "That's no longer needed because you don't need to do a self-assessment since we're moving on."

Churchill said he expected board members to follow his directive, despite their opposition to the Liberal government's plan to replace them with an advisory body.

"I fully expect all the assistance in the world from the boards, despite the fact they disagree with this move," he said.

One of the major tasks of school boards is to prepare and debate budgets, but Churchill said his department is already working on those budgets. The figures will be incorporated in the department's estimates to be presented in the provincial budget this spring.

Meanwhile, the Canadian School Boards Association is calling the province's plan to abolish school boards "a threat to democracy and to the right of presentation."

The president of the association, which is gathering in Calgary this week, issued a statement saying: "Government and leadership should be building the education system: not breaking it down."