By Emily Toms
Even without any official power, local trustees of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board are keeping busy both in the boardroom and out in their communities.
Trustee meetings can no longer be called board meetings since only provincially- appointed board supervisor Merv Beckstead has authority to make decisions, explains Joan Spice, trustee for Somerset-Kitchissippi.
When trustees met last week, it may have looked like a traditional school board meeting, but without Beckstead in attendance the school board wasn’t actually there.
While trustees can make recommendations to Beckstead, they can no longer vote on board issues. Without that power, trustees can’t make decisions about things like school closures and financing special education.
Although Beckstead has met with trustees one at a time, he has yet to meet with them as a whole, Spice says, adding Beckstead has said he would consider the outcome of motions at trustee meetings as advice.
At the last trustee meeting Oct. 15, seven out of 12 trustees were present and unanimously passed a motion that Beckstead consult with trustees before finalizing more budget cuts.
Beckstead has announced three meetings for early November where the public can make suggestions regarding budget decisions. He could not be reached for comment.
Outside the board room, Spice says she continues to meet with school councils and to work on projects like the recent tree planting and playground improvements at Glashan Public School.
Trustee Lynn Graham says advocacy is also key for trustees in light of changes at the board. “[I’m] still speaking out as loud as I can for public education,” she says.
Some concerns trustees are hearing stem from budget cuts Beckstead has already made, like his decision to ‘twin’ 22 elementary and middle schools so that two schools share one principal.
This worries Spice, who currently has three ‘twinned’ schools in her zone. “That is a very difficult situation for the principals involved so we’re very concerned about that,” she says.
Bronwyn Funiciello, co-chair of the lobby group Our Schools, Our Communities, says that even without their official power trustees “are still our democratically elected representatives.”
Funiciello, along with trustees David Moen, Jim Libbey and Margaret Lange, and former Our Schools, Our Communities co-chair Mitchell Beer, have filed legal action seeking to remove Beckstead as OCDSB supervisor.
If successful, trustees would regain their voting power, but it is unclear whether Beckstead’s decisions would be voided.
When Ottawa trustees passed a deficit budget last year, it violated the Education Act. The act requires boards to pass balanced budgets, and gives the provincial education minister the right to appoint a supervisor if she thinks it necessary. In this case, Beckstead was assigned to eliminate the deficit by making cuts.
“Even though the trustees are no longer making decisions, we’re still monitoring very closely what’s going on in all the schools,” Spice says, adding parents should still contact trustees and school councils with any concerns they have about education.
Moen agrees, stating at the Oct. 15 meeting that one of the main roles of trustees is “to represent the views of our constituents . . . and I think that there is nobody else capable of doing that right now.”
Beckstead has yet to announce more budget cuts. Moen told those attending the trustee meeting “it would be irresponsible in my view for the supervisor to go ahead and make decisions without taking the pulse of the community . . . and without making use of the skills and knowledge that are available to him through this body [of trustees].
“It’s our duty to provide him with this advice,” Moen said, “and I would suggest that it’s his duty to listen to it.”