Unpublished letter sent to The Toronto Star
Re: York Catholic Board ‘bleeding senior staff’ April 22, 2021
The recent hiring debacle (again) at YCDSB is nothing new. The trustees have a professional history that includes playing politics relentlessly and playing favourites. They have governed a board where cronyism and questionable hiring practices for senior staff are the norm. The environment has been poisoned for decades. In the 1990s the board was taken over when trustees had run up a huge deficit and expected to force the government to pay for it (they didn’t). Budget cuts decimated the board. Their incompetence in hiring Directors is only the tip of the iceberg.
This has been going on for more than forty years with many of the trustees being re-elected again and again due to voter disinterest in trustee elections. The Board’s “inbreeding” led to other problems that directly affected the quality of education. Rather than acting like an independent Board (trustees have no individual authority), trustees went against this mandate and became involved with local school parents and the newly political school councils. They were constantly working behind the scenes, siding with parents, stirring up trouble against the principals and staff with the support of the Superintendents. It was all sides against the middle and many principals got ground up in the process. Teachers and principals were also divided when Mike Harris took principals out of the unions on April 1, 1998, He effectively emasculated and silenced a group that could have held the trustees (and the Superintendents) at bay. You were guilty until proven innocent. YCDSB became a “yes” Board. Yes boards are bad decision makers. Principals were powerless. Trustees allowed an antiquated top-down system of administration to operate without oversight – my way or the highway. As a principal you were on your own in a jungle and if you didn’t play their game you were ostracized. You were always the last to know.
As a result, education has become a collection of “yes” people attempting to satisfy everyone while satisfying no one. The YCDSB is no different than any other board in Ontario. If we ever want a good education system we need to give education back to professional educators – full stop. We don’t have doctors being dictated to or police officers or architects. There is a difference between input and control. The former is useful, the latter destructive.
Not exactly a recipe for “quality education.”