Reimagining School Administration: Transforming School Boards into Ministry Regional Directorates

2023-09-05 15:30:00

The Legault government had promised to abolish school boards. He did it. In fact, not quite. He suppressed the very unpopular principle of school democracy. There are therefore no longer elected school officials who sit on these structures and for which they were responsible. Moreover, we even changed their name: they are no longer school boards, they are now school service centres.

Beyond these cosmetic changes, nothing in reality has changed. Nothing has improved, and these big changes have not led to any noticeable gains for students and school teams. These new centers continue to operate independently, not exchanging information, best practices or employee files.

We talk regarding decentralization and local management, but the reality is that it is a network that does not speak to each other, a disintegrated and disorganized network, where the accountability lies with absent subscribers.

Human resources departments that do not speak to each other, if only to exchange information, background checks carried out haphazardly, different hiring processes and according to criteria specific to each one, compilations of data difficult and sometimes non-existent, etc. This is the portrait of school service centers today.

We are wondering if it is relevant to have this heavy administrative structure that does not shine by its efficiency. Bill 23 currently under consideration will eventually allow the directors general of these centers to be appointed (and dismissed) by the Minister of Education. It’s a good start, but it’s clearly not enough. Why not really abolish them and transform them into regional directorates of the ministry?

Because for that matter, the idea that teachers, staff and executives have a single employer, the Ministry of Education, would certainly facilitate the circulation of information, the understanding of the government’s vision and above all , its application. There would certainly be better consistency in the ways of doing things and that would generate economies of scale that might be reinvested in this same network.

It is sure that another structural debate creates uncertainty and targets the network. This is also often the reason given by politicians who shovel forward and refuse to tackle the crux of the problem. We are talking today regarding the relevance of school service centres, when we might have been at another stage if the previous ministers had had the courage to do so.

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