School board: A local board authority responsible for the provision and maintenance of schools
Today's school boards: A unit of local government that determines the policy, budget, leadership, and administration within certain districts, public and Catholic schools.
The evolution of our school boards shows distinct and magnified changes, incorporating political-social and religious aspects from our communities into school policy and administration.
Ethnic and religious populations have changed, reflecting a more conservative attitude toward how school boards should respond to gender-based issues, financial responsibilities, religious learning, language preferences versus traditional French-English language policies, and much more. Many school boards cannot withstand the impact they are feeling from various lobbyist influence barring organizations and family-based focal points.
Is it now the time to change our education system, which has failed in so many ways due to pandemic demands these past three years? Unite Catholic and secular school boards, eliminate the costly multiple school boards across the province and put all things educational under a provincial-centred umbrella.
In 2019-21, the school boards cost more than $29.8 billion, not including Catholic boards' expenditures. One can only imagine that uniting the two boards into one, under the audit and management of a centralized education ministry, would improve our students' education, universalize our cultural and moral social commitments and make decision-making easier, quicker and more efficient.
Transparency without prejudice of religion, ethnicity and political influence may very well be acceptable to all citizens in Ontario. Quebec's example of universal secularization of education may become a uniting factor in Ontario also.
Religious prejudice toward other religions and their expression of their faith within a set policy that promotes one faith over another can be very divisive in an organization. Faith-based education and governmental policy cannot be well-founded. One cannot be open to gender-sexual equality when an organization such as the Catholic Church looks upon these equal rights as blasphemy and morally wrong.
Having a multitude of school boards makes for a divided education and social agenda. The Ontario constitution, while uncodified and unwritten, must reflect Ontario's forever-evolving social and cultural citizenship.
All governments must move toward a simplified, less costly, more transparent governmental model if social peace is maintained and promoted.
Steven Kaszab
Bradford
