Loopy spending, and loopy choices, lead many to query the necessity for varsity boards to maintain current.
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A visit to Hawaii, a visit to Italy to purchase artwork, a convention within the lodge at Rogers Centre to look at a Blue Jays recreation. No, these aren’t my trip plans, these are precise journeys taken by faculty boards within the final couple of minutes.
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Between this and among the craziness allowed into the classroom, faculty boards are doing a great job of convincing extra folks they merely shouldn’t exist.
For years, there have been calls to remove faculty boards all collectively in Ontario or for the province to merge the a number of faculty boards into one for every geographic area. In cities like Toronto and Ottawa there are 4 faculty boards – English public, English Catholic, French public and French Catholic – and there are lots of those who wish to see fewer boards.
Do we actually want greater than 70 faculty boards in Ontario? Do we want any faculty boards in Ontario, or might we remove them and run all the pieces from the ministry?
The ridiculous journey tales by the boards have positively had folks questioning why we want all these directors and overhead. To this point, neither Premier Doug Ford nor his authorities are on the level of claiming they wish to begin shutting down or merging faculty boards, however they do need some accountability.
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“Actually, it’s appalling,” Schooling Minister Jill Dunlop stated final week after information broke of the Hawaii journey.
“The premier has directed me to do audits of discretionary funding within the faculty boards, and we’ll be continuing with that.”
The Lambton Kent District College Board spent $32,000 to ship three staffers to a four-day convention in Hawaii final January. The bills included lodge rooms that value roughly $1,050 to $1,550 per night time.
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However keep in mind, we’re continuously informed that the province doesn’t spend sufficient on schooling. Why ought to we spend extra? In order that we are able to have dearer journeys by extremely paid bureaucrats?
“Schooling is necessary, however the cash’s obtained to be spent on college students and on program spending,” PC MPP Bob Bailey informed the Sarnia Observer final week.
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He’s proper, however the educrats who run the system don’t appear to be getting the message. They appear to assume that the cash we hand over to teach youngsters within the classroom is finest spent on their massive salaries, their journey and their loopy pet tasks.
Final July, 4 trustees for the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District College Board travelled to Northern Italy, paying greater than $50,000 for the journey, together with a single meal that value $1,610. The trustees have been there to purchase greater than $100,000 price of artwork for 2 new colleges.
We noticed the Thames Valley District College Board spend greater than $38,000 for a planning assembly on the lodge that’s a part of the Rogers Centre, the place the Blue Jays play. Paperwork obtained by the London Free Press present that 18 totally different directors took half within the conferences, and watching Jays video games.
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The London District Catholic College Board appears a discount by spending simply $16,000 for 26 senior employees members to attend an out-of-town planning session in St. Catharines. It’s nonetheless a questionable expense given the endless claims that schooling is underfunded however appears affordable by comparability.
Take all of this misspending by the varied boards, and also you begin to have critical questions. Have a look at how boards function outdoors of the fiscal facet of issues, and you’ll have extra questions.
Discipline journeys to protests the place college students are led in antisemitic chants and Canada is described as a felony colonial state. Variety, fairness and inclusion conferences that humiliate a veteran trainer to the purpose of suicide. A store trainer carrying enormous pretend breasts to high school to point out how ridiculous the system is, and the board did nothing. Academics pushing political agendas resembling insisting that 2+2=4 is racism.
College boards are imagined to be the closest type of native democracy. They’re imagined to act as a type of management by the mother and father whose youngsters are being educated.
For the previous a number of years, they’ve been failing miserably at this function. If that doesn’t change, there gained’t be an argument for preserving them round.
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