Is it me, or does this Dufferin-Peel deficit thing just keep getting weirder and weirder?
The latest twist is the way Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne has appointed a non-supervisor to rush in and chop the programs that trustees have refused to chop.
Apparently still stinging from the flesh wounds she suffered when she went through the same experience as a trustee with the Toronto District School Board three years ago, Wynne has now decided to try to soften the sting of the supervisor by suggesting that two Dufferin-Peel trustees be appointed to “co-manage” the process.
It’s like inviting somebody to be a pall bearer at their own funeral. It just doesn’t work that way.
First of all, there are logistical problems. Unless she appoints Esther O’Toole, who is acclaimed to office, how can the minister guarantee that her appointees will still be in office Dec. 1, when the new term starts? There’s a little thing called a municipal election coming up Nov. 13.
How is the minister going to determine which two trustees represent the will of the board? If they to be merely observers, what’s the point? The Minister could just direct Norbert Hartmann, the chair of the co-management team (Read: Supervisor in all but name) to keep trustees informed at every stage of the process, couldn’t she?
Then there’s the little problem of finding trustees willing to serve. Talk about wedging yourself between a rock and a hard place. Who would want to be part of such a process, when the board has already spoken clearly on the issue and any changes that the co-manging trustees endorse will be seen as compromising that stand?
Board Chair Peter Ferreira, for one, finds it hard to believe there will be any takers.
“If nobody volunteers, then they’ll just have him (Hartmann) do the cuts,” Ferreira said. “This is just optics, to make it look like the minister wants to involve the board.”
Ferreira, who is running for City council against incumbent Maja Prentice in Ward 3, says trustees have already reduced the deficit from $16.6 to $7.5 million. Trustees feel that going beyond that point will do irreparable harm.
Mind you trustees have already made reductions in the number of vice-principals, secretaries and custodians and not replaced positions which are going to affect the system too.
In a private weekend meeting with Wynne a couple of weeks ago, the chair told the minister that if her staff published the long-awaited new guidelines for school closures, Dufferin-Peel could close a couple of schools that have fewer than 100 kids left and save $1 million in a hurry.
What all this is about, of course, is the I’m-Not-Going-To-Take-The-Blame game. Trustees facing the electorate in a month refuse to leave their bloody finger prints on the knife that performs surgery on their system.
The McGuinty Liberals, facing the electorate in less than a year, don’t want their claim of being the “education government” compromised by a bunch of intransigent trustees who keep pointing out that the real villain in all this is the funding formula, which the party promised to fix. So they are giving Dufferin-Peel trustees yet another chance to hoist themselves on their own petards.
The ping-pong game of strategic offloading of responsibility continues.