P.E.I. English Language School Board's last stand

Those who work in P.E.I.'s school system are still grappling to come to terms with the surprise news that the English Language School Board will be dissolved.

That was not the tenor of the debate that we wanted. So that system I think was broken in that regard. Peter Rukavina, PEI Home and School Federation president

The provincial government announced Thursday morning that the board's functions were being transferred to the Department of Education, and the board's role in the delivery of education would be phased out over the next six to nine months.

As he announced the board's dissolution, Education Minister Hal Perry thanked the trustees for their work, but no one suggested they or the role they played will be missed not the PEI Home and School Federation. Not the P.E.I. Teachers' Federation. Even the Official Opposition said scrapping the board was the right move.

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• P.E.I.'s English Language School Board to be dissolved

PEI Home and School Federation president Peter Rukavina said the very public battles between government and the board were part of the problem with the old system.

"We were having all these discussions about important issues in education and they were being played out in the media," he offered.

"So you have the superintendent and chair of the English Language School Board making battle with the premier and the minister of education on Compass. That's not the way you make collaborative decisions about education. That was not the tenor of the debate that we wanted. So that system I think was broken in that regard. I hope maybe this is a better way of doing it. Our jury is out until we see what the particulars are, but I have great hope."

A very public battle

According to the government's audited financial statements released last month, total grants to the province's two school boards totaled just under $210 million for the 2014-15 fiscal year.

That was about $3 million over budget with all of the extra going to salaries.

So it's easy now to understand why the English Language School Board was in a tizzy over the $210 million allocated to school boards for the 2015-16 fiscal year. The budget delivered in June was the first by the MacLauchlan government, elected the month before.

Without staffing cuts, negotiated salary increases with teachers and other school workers would push expenditures beyond $210 million.

While government was slow to admit it, figures around staffing cuts were eventually released: 28 teaching positions would be lost (the board said it was 35).

Thirteen more administrative positions were being cut at the Department of Education and at the English Language School Board. And responsibility for curriculum delivery (we all had to look up exactly what that is) was being transferred from the board to the department.

The board's last stand

The English board's trustees took the unorthodox step of scheduling a special public meeting after the end of the school year to discuss the cuts.

The deputy chair said the board was prepared to vote "on a course of action," not saying what that might be but it sounded like it could be big. One of the rumours making the rounds was that trustees were prepared to resign en masse.

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Government was able to defuse the situation quite literally at the last minute. A message was delivered to trustees in the midst of that meeting that government would review the cuts. (They were all eventually reversed.)

The board might have won its battle with the government concessions delivered in the midst of that one meeting, but it lost the war.

'A negative impact on student achievement'

Days before the meeting, government had relented on curriculum delivery, conceding responsibility would stay with the board. (The Department of Curriculum Delivery, it turns out, is in part responsible for teacher professional development, monitoring students' progress and provides literacy and numeracy coaches to work with teachers.)

The minutes from that board meeting do provide some insights.

The board acknowledged the province's financial challenges, but maintained that "the current demands on the school system are such that a reduction in teaching positions would have a negative impact on student achievement."

This was after 106 teaching positions had been cut over the three previous years.

Those cuts were made following a 2009 report commissioned by government from the person who created the instructional staffing formula still used to this day. His key recommendation? Don't cut teachers. The report was shelved, never to be seen by the public until it was uncovered by a CBC access-to-information request last year.

So what now?

The board as it existed in its final years was not as it was originally intended to be.

All 12 trustees were appointed by the provincial cabinet. The last trustee elections in the former Easter school district were held in 2008. Those trustees were all fired by former education minister Doug Currie over infighting that erupted after trustees went through the divisive process of closing eight schools.

New elections were scheduled and delayed repeatedly, and were finally supposed to take place in the spring of 2016.

The trustees had already been dismissed this past Thursday, according to Perry, before the news was delivered that the board had been dissolved.

Government is creating a new system of advisory councils to provide parents, students and educators with input on how the school system is run. Each family of schools will have its own district advisory council. There will be another council made up of Island principals. One more council, the P.E.I. Learning Partners Advisory Council, is meant to take a long-term view of learning, from birth to post-secondary and beyond, according to government's plan.

Premier MacLauchlan said these new advisory councils will more than make up for the loss of trustees as advocates for the school system, adding "it's the highest responsibility of government and the legislature to provide the resources to provide for the best [education] system we can afford."

Presumably that was also true in each of the last four budgets, as government was cutting or at least proposing to cut teaching positions.