The Board of Education has its lens; the parents who want their schools kept open have their lens - are these rose coloured glasses?

highschoolsBy Pepper Parr

March 29, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

What was originally planned as a two meeting consultation ended its seventh meeting with several of the 14 participants not certain they had finished the job they set out do – which for many was to ensure that their school did not close and for most to do everything they could to not close any schools.

There were some hard truths to be dealt with – there are 1800 plus secondary classroom seats empty and 3000 + elementary classroom seats that are not being filled.

No more desks set out in neat rows. The classroom furniture is now such that students can sit by themselves or in groups of two or three - up to eight. The objective was to create situations where the students learn to work as groups and to collaborate on a problem - question or assignment.

Empty classroom seats – 1800 + at the secondary level and 3000 + at the elementary level. Unsustainable.

The problem was twofold – too many empty seats and catchment area boundaries that did not match well enough with the student population

It was during those conversations that the gap between the thinking the Board of Education does and the thinking the parents do – most of whom had strong private sector backgrounds, became painfully evident.

In thanking the 14 PARC participants Director of Education Stuart Miller was both positive and effusive. He had learned far more than he expected to learn and was much more aware of where the school board was failing to communicate effectively with parents.

Miller prep at Central

Director of Education Stuart Miller

Miller mentioned how complex running an education system is and touched upon the acronyms that are used to describe the numerous programs that are offered to students. He added that the board knew the education side of the problem and the parents knew the community side of the problem and that the space between the two was much wider than he expected.

If anything comes out of this PARC exercise it is that there is a lot of work to be done by the board to get its story out to the community. Miller has to be given credit for that realization – now he has to find a way to improve that communication and accept that trustees cannot be expected to do all of it.

The options the Board has to deal with is to close one high school or two high schools or try really hard to find a way to not close any of the high schools.

The hard reality is that Burlington no longer has as many families as it once had – and there are nowhere near the number of young people being fed into the educational system

PARC crowd Dec 8-16

The Director of Education admits that the Board has not managed to communicate effectively with the parents – the PARC process taught him that much. How does he change that dynamic?

The problem is now in the hands of the Board staff who have to write reports that will go to the trustees who will then make the final decision – which will be on June 7th

The school year ends June 29th – there are a lot of educators who will want to get out of town real fast – the prospects for keeping all the schools open do not look that good.

 

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