Editorial | Thames Valley District School Board: A Case Study for the VSB

Maggie MacPherson/CBC

If trustees were expecting a status quo meeting at the Thames Valley District School Board meeting on April 26, they were in for a surprise. The mayor of Zorra township, Marcus Ryan, delivered a stunning rebuke of the leadership, or the lack thereof, delivered by the trustees.

“I’m not entirely sure if I should ask the trustees or the director. Who is, in fact, in charge here? Who makes the decisions of how one billion dollars of our tax dollars is spent on our children’s education? The board passes resolutions, but then the senior administration appears to do whatever they want,” he said.

He was then called out on a point of order by the chair for being disrespectful.

“Mayor Ryan, we have to be respectful to the assembly,” Board Chair Lori-Ann Pizzolato told the mayor. “Everything has to be positive. We’re trying to teach children positivity, so let’s be positive,” Pizzolato stated.

Multiple times he asked for clarification on what was disrespectful about his statements, but no trustee answered his question. A point of order was then called on the previous point of order, where trustee Corrine Rahman defended the Board’s work over the past few years, supposedly because COVID makes their jobs harder. ”We’re all trying our best,” she said.

Ryan was visibly distressed by the unwillingness by the Board to listen to feedback. “If pointing out deficiencies in governance is disrespectful and unacceptable, then I don’t understand how I could possibly give you a delegation on governance; and frankly, I don’t understand how any governing institution can ever hope to get better if they’re unwilling to accept even the slightest criticism of how they function.” He went on; “are the egoes in this room that fragile that a little bit of sarcasm is not acceptable?”

At one point, the board parlimentarian explicitly laid out that “argumentativeness and criticism are not allowed in any form in the boardroom.”

The mayor continued with his speech, decrying the mixed messages that members of the community received from the district. In one example that he brought up, the district’s Senior Management sent out communication to parents that “under- mined” the decisions and messages sent out by the Board.

“This is nothing but a charade and a sham,” he stated before storming out.

This board meeting could very well be a case study for what the Vancouver School Board might become.

It is the fundamental aim of our elected officials to keep in check the decisions of the District management, yet time and time again, our trustees don’t question their staffs’ information.

Not often enough do trustees take a critical look at what management shows them. The district staff essentially has free reign and little oversight to implement whatever they see fit.

The Mayor of the Zorra Township put it well when he questioned who was in charge. Is it the people we elect to represent us, or is it the bureaucracy of the district management?

Beyond the lack of proper oversight by the trustees, the Vancouver School Board struggles to take feedback and criticism from parents, teachers, and students. This has been especially true during the MACC revisioning campaign and the Queen Elizabeth Annex closure consideration.

Even in the instance of Special Delegations, when members of the community present to the Board, there is minimal engagement from the trustees, if any at all.

They all follow a similar formula — it is quite simple, really. The delegation begins. The presenter speaks, usually accompanied by media such as a slide deck or photographs. Their five minute period of time expires. They are met with silence. They are thanked for speaking.

The consistent a lack of questions posed by trustees, both to management and community members championing a cause, is troubling and demonstrates either a lack of critical thinking or a lack of care.

We will give you a hint: neither are good of elected officials in a democracy.