The ADTA will be publishing the results of their survey of trustee candidates on their website at some point. But in the interests of full disclosure I'm posting them in my blog. I mean no disrespect to the ADTA in doing this. The survey asked some good questions that deserve a wide readership, and it is for that reason that I am publishing them here.

1.    If elected how would you ensure that all classes in Abbotsford respect the class size and composition limits found in the School Act? (As of September 30th there were 168 classes that exceeded the class size maximums and 180 classes with 4 or more IEP students in Abbotsford)  

Obviously every effort should be made to respect class size limits. But class size issues are complicated by what is called the aggregate, which simply means average class size and is always lower than the class size limit. By regulation, it is not necessarily sufficient to be at or below the class limit. For instance, a school may have four grade one classes all within the class size limits. But the average size of those four classes may still exceed the government-required aggregate. This happens, for instance, when a number of unexpected students show up in September and have to be added to the established classes. All of a sudden, the average size of those four classes rises, even though the size limit may still be respected. Moving students around to get the aggregate down is the regrettable result. This has cost the district unnecessary millions, often causing split classes and requiring additional portables, and has been a real problem in getting students into their classroom with their assigned teacher at the beginning of the year, such as we saw this fall at Margaret Stenersen. The Board has been lobbying both our MLAs and BCPSEA hard on this issue.

As for IEP students, this issue exceeds, in my opinion, the class size issue. One teacher I know had seven different E.A.s over the course of a year (sometimes as many as four in a day) because of the E.A.s being part-time, taking maternity leave, or taking stress leave. And this with only two I.E.P. students. I think that this is an area where much work needs to be done.

2.    What are your top three educational priorities for the District?

 a. Leadership - Many trustees don’t know the difference between governance and administration, leading to much micro-managing of senior educators’ decisions. This undermines the authority and confidence of educational administrators.

b. Listening - While trustees are there as representatives of the public interest, often public input is given short shrift, as was seen in the school calendar debate. The Board has tried to make meetings with stakeholders a higher priority in recent years, but I find those meetings to be too perfunctory to have much impact on decision-making.

c. Kick-starting the district - Our students made steady, sometimes spectacular improvements in outcomes over the past 10-15 years. But that momentum has stalled and I feel that the district has gone into a slump despite its excellent educators. Ways have to be found to return to that upward path of motivated educators, flourishing learners, and supportive families.

3.     What steps would you take to ensure meaningful regular communication with teachers on matters of School Board policy?

As a long-time professor of management and organizational behaviour I have learned that communication is nearly always the number one concern of employees.

My own view is that the vast majority of policy-making decisions should be left to the senior educators, with the trustees being concerned only with issues of governance. The senior administrators, in turn, should mine the rich resources of our teachers for input on educational policy. But I have also found that the teachers’ unions want to pull out of such activity when there is a dispute at the provincial level. All of a sudden, policy-making is deemed to be administrative work that has nothing to do with teaching. So all sides need to get better at this.

4.   How should the current labour dispute between teachers and BCPSEA be resolved, or can it be resolved?

As the spouse of a teacher, I am in conflict on that issue; therefore, I can’t speak to it. I think I can say this, however: The current industrial model of collective bargaining employed in the public     sector needs to be radically overhauled. A system developed in the 1940s to 1960s, largely by big     industrial unions bargaining with the big auto and mining companies at a time when the public sector was all non-union, just doesn’t meet today’s needs. Students should not be caught in the middle. On the other hand, educators should not be taken advantage of because they teach innocent third parties. Surely there are “getting to yes” models of collective bargaining that don’t harm students, and are not weighted only to one side’s advantage. It’s been done in other sectors--why not in education?

Please circle Yes or No and provide a comment if you wish for the following questions.

1. Do/did your children attend public school?   Yes            No            N/A                              Comment: Yes, but the issue is more or less moot in the case of my children, who are in their mid-thirties. I am a graduate of public schools as is my wife. She is a public school teacher.
   

2.    Would you support the creation of a School District “needs” budget? Yes            No

Comment: By a needs budget, do you mean a budget that deliberately runs an illegal deficit to make a point? Frankly, no. But I do think that the board should continue to make its needs very clear to the Ministry of Education, and to lobby for improvements via every available avenue. Actually, the present board, and past boards have done this with a fair degree of success. One can’t ignore the realities of a recession, of course. But we do work hard at arguing against unfair aspects of the funding formula and other government actions and decisions that run contrary to Abbotsford’s interests; e.g., the transportation funding, job equity funding.

3.    Do you endorse the formation of a policy that specifically protects Gay and Lesbian students?               Yes            No

Comment: I endorse policies that protect anyone who is discriminated against, and we do have policies that prohibit discrimination. In asking this question, are you suggesting that gay and lesbian students have been requesting specific policy language? If so, we should certainly be looking into it to see why they would feel singled out over other groups that face discrimination (e.g., race, religion, etc.). By the way, I don’t refer to students in quite the way it’s phrased in the question. There are students who are of various races, students who live with a disability, students who are challenged, students who are gay, etc. But they are all students first, and all students deserve a safe, obstacle-free, enriched environment within which to learn.

4.    Do you support the restoration of the guaranteed class-size limits, specialist teacher ratios and support for students special needs that were stripped from the 2002 Collective Agreement?                    Yes            No

Comment: Again, as the spouse of a teacher, I am in conflict on contract issues and can’t comment.