THE REALITY ABOUT TRUSTEE INFIGHTING

Luisa D'Amato's Opinion column in today's Waterloo Region Record is titled "Trustees have one last chance to get it right". Luisa has been writing about our local school boards for as long as I can remember. She has been professional but blunt and indeed scathing at times. It appears as if little has changed since my run in with the Waterloo Region District School Board and their majority of lapdogs pretending to be trustees.

I found senior administrative staff at the Board back in the late 90s to be disgusting. They were nothing if not blindly loyal to the teachers and their unions. They were not interested in either the truth or in trying to solve serious problems with bad apple teachers in their employ. Obviously the Ron Archer case was an extreme one but one which shines a spotlight on the internal protectionism and non accountability of teachers, much less the school board itself.

Luisa refers to the Code of conduct as thoroughly undemocratic. She also refers to trustees sitting in judgement of their fellow trustees as a "kangaroo court". She is right on both counts but what is the real reason behind their animosity? At the moment trustees can't hold any staff or teachers accountable when they are liable to censure under the idiotic Code of Conduct just for listening to criticism of staff and then not immediately challenging that criticism. That is nuts. Similarly trustees are not allowed to keep Board staff and administrators on the straight and narrow because trustees are prohibited from criticizing anything they do even when student achievement is in the toilet.

The problem in my opinion isn't trustee infighting. Thank God they are fighting because otherwise the majority of trustees who go along with these asinine Codes of Conduct and asinine rules forcing trustees to always speak glowingly about Board staff and administrators would have absolute free rein to continue the WRDSB's long history of self congratulation, back patting, puffery and putting teachers' unions and staff miles ahead of students' and parents' interests.