Who has the right to speak on Education issues?
TORONTO – In western societies, the “State” has the biggest stake in the outcome of the education process. In the last several days, Italy, where the first and oldest formal educational institutions (classical, or formative) evolved, is witnessing a national debate on the function of schools and the composition of the curricula. President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are leading the debate. They are raising some of the same issues that resonate here: integration, values performance.
They do not exclude the rights and obligations of parents and citizens in this nation-building [identity] process. In Canada, the Constitution defines the roles and the implementation of the responsibilities that flow from them, assigning to Provincial governments and Local school boards “the burden” and privilege of that governance.
In Ontario, particularly Southern Ontario and the Greater Greater Toronto Area (GGTA) some Ministry Education officials, School board administrators and their Trustee collaborators have made such a mess of the exercise that parents have begun to take their most valuable “assets” to alternative locations. The money follows.
Supervisors assigned with the powers to effect change appear oblivious to the stupor into which they have been parachuted. This is especially true in the Catholic District School Boards which benefit, on the surface, from an ethical ideological supplement to the secular curriculum.
Consequently, “disrupter” trustees take the path of least resistance, on financial, pedagogical and ethical matters. In some issues, like Trustee Jennifer Wigston in the YCDSB, they “mind their knitting” (even in meetings). In the TCDSB, former Chair Markus De Domenico declared to a “friendly journalist” that he is running for re-election because “I love my job”.
No mention of the deterioration of the ideological obligations incumbent on Catholic trustees and supported by the Education Act, and obligations of same for fiscal responsibility.
He and his crew of counter- Catholic culture advocates on the Board (like Maria Rizzo, Angela Kennedy, Ida Lipreti) and among the Staff, are escaping scrutiny and dismissal for their documented financial incompetence.
Now they and other trustees are shifting responsibility for educational harm and mental health damage they have caused their own students onto Big Tech and are suing for compensation. Eleven Billion dollars worth ($11 billion). What audacity! It is all listed in the lawsuit they have filed against Meta and Big Tech. What are the provincially appointed supervisors doing?
Back to the York Catholic District School Board, the musings of one trustee, Theresa McNicol (an ally of Wigston), taken by colleagues as a slur of implied criminality because of their ethnic origin, have not deterred her from seeking re-election.
Two trustees on the receiving end of their questionable and disruptive conduct towards Board colleagues, trustees Di Meo and Iafrate have been acclaimed. They deserve to move forward with the responsible approach they have shown so far.
The electorate should dump the others.
Here below is Jennifer Wigston in a screenshot taken during a meeting at the YCDSB
