NEVERENDING SCHOOL BOARD GAMESMANSHIP

Career bureaucrats have long learned how to have their way at the Waterloo Region District School Board. Sometimes it's smooth and subtle and other times they wield the big legal stick, backed by taxpayers millions of dollars which they control. Overall in my opinion it's a disgusting and contemtible system and as a direct result it lurches from one crisis to another. Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carrys the following Opinion piece from Peter Shawn Taylor: "Waterloo Region's public school board plans new ways to ignore parents".

Recent crises include the Jesse Sansone unbelievable overeaction by a teacher, principal, School Board and FCS (CAS). Before that we had the extended day debate. "Faced with a massive wave of public outrage, and after months of stonewalling and diversionary tactics, the public board finally relented and shelved its takeover plan in February." If the system were honest and above board in the first place the bureaucrats involved in stonewalling and diversionary tactics would have been fired long ago. Unfortunately the foxes have long been in charge of the henhouse and no senior authority at the provincial level has ever seen fit to clean house. That's a shame and may be why our educational system will not and can not compete in honest world wide comparisons.

Mr. Taylor explores in detail the new rules that Trustees are introducing which will make public delegations so much less likely. He also compares them to delegations which go through rules to appear at our local municipal councils. It's an eyeopener. I learned many years ago just how badly broken the system is. Apparently it's not just broken enough for some of these self serving bureaucrats and their toadie Trustees. One notable exception is long time Cambridge Trustee Cindy Watson. Kudos to her once again for her principled objections to this plan.