Altomare showing restraint with wayward school boards

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/08/2024 (513 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“The NDP are talking out of both sides of their mouths on this issue; they were some of the loudest supporters of school division autonomy while they were in Opposition.”

— Spruce Woods PC MLA and education critic Grant Jackson, Aug. 26.

Manitoba’s NDP government has been challenged by erratic behaviour at another level of government this year.

While a provincial government might normally expect to be most challenged by its senior partner at the federal level and experience differences of opinion over funding, ideology and a host of other reasons, it’s perhaps our country’s smallest level of democracy that has proved to be the greatest irritant this year.

Our colleagues at the Winnipeg Free Press reported earlier this week that Education Minister Nello Altomare has appointed a retired superintendent as an adviser to trustees with the Steinbach-based Hanover School Division.

This move comes after several Hanover trustees participated in one of the “1 Million March 4 Children” rallies held in Canada last year protesting 2SLGBTQIA+ content and what they referred to as “gender ideology” being taught in schools.

Trustees also changed a divisional hiring policy to give their board power in the hiring of physical education and music teachers, which the Hanover Parent Alliance for Diversity argued was an attempt to minimize diversity among division employees.

According to the Free Press, board chair Brad Unger said in an email that “the adviser is assigned to support the board only — not senior administrators.”

This sounds awfully familiar to the situation in Dauphin, where a highly questionable presentation from a Mountain View School Division trustee in April led Altomare to install an advisory board after Indigenous groups as well as the Manitoba Teachers’ Society called for the dissolution of the entire board.

There were later accusations from individuals that division Supt. Stephen Jaddock had been fired for allowing a Pride march in Dauphin to start on division property.

Board chair Gabe Mercier denied that allegation to the Sun, but the same trustee who made the racist presentation went on a far-right online news show and said — among other things — that rainbow Pride flags at division schools should be replaced with pictures of Jesus surrounded by children. Not an especially inspiring message of diversity.

Both divisions have diversity policies that their trustees’ actions appear to violate. Those diversity policies are mandated by the provincial Public Schools Act.

In the third case that Altomare has intervened in this year, he appointed an investigator to review the finances of the Seine River School Division after it ran a deficit exceeding $1 million. Manitoba’s school boards are not permitted to run deficits under provincial law.

The problem facing Altomare and the NDP in this situation is that just three years ago, they rallied against a failed attempt to eliminate school boards.

The much-maligned Bill 64 would have replaced all of Manitoba’s elected school boards, except for the one managing the affairs of francophone schools, with a centralized organizing body.

In a story published in one of the Free Press’s community editions in May 2021, Altomare lamented the effect the bill would have had on the local level of democracy.

“People care about their local schools, and with the removal of locally elected officials, community writ large is being carved out of the decision-making process,” Altomare said at the time.

With three appointments of outside advisers to school divisions in eight months, Spruce Woods Progressive Conservative MLA Grant Jackson isn’t necessarily wrong to say that Altomare is trying to “babysit democratically elected officials.”

However, that sentiment doesn’t quite capture the complexity of the situation.

The province has a duty to uphold standards for matters under its jurisdiction, like education. Especially when two of the divisions subject to Altomare’s magnifying glass are acting in a way that implies that some of their students aren’t as important as others.

It’s also worth nothing that, under the letter of the law, Altomare has thus far shown restraint.

Under the Public Schools Act, the provincial cabinet can advise the lieutenant-governor to appoint a special trustee “for any school division or school district, the affairs of which are not being or cannot be, in his opinion, satisfactorily managed by the school board of that school division or school district.”

When that happens, all officials of the school division or school district in question immediately cease to hold office.

The minister clearly does not think those divisions can operate without supervision and he would be entitled to dismiss their elected officials, but he has chosen not to.

It remains to be seen what happens in Hanover School Division, but Seine River and Mountain View have been subject to supervision for months now and nothing has happened.

If Altomare were truly opposed to school board autonomy, he would have left these divisions stewing in the holes they’ve dug for themselves. Instead, he has lowered a rope and is waiting to see whether they’ll put in the work to drag themselves out.