What to do if you are a school board and a community group comes forward and offers to buy a portable classroom that’s needed at a local school?
It’s not a rhetorical question. It happened at the Peel District School Board. It caused a dilemma at the time because there was no policy that covered the situation.
That’s why the board developed an amendment to policy number 5 partnerships/fundraising.
The amendment was approved at the March 27 board meeting. Trustees must have suspected that the new policy, which specifically permits fundraising for a new gym, auditorium, theatre or any other capital project, was going to draw a lot of attention.
And attention it got. According to Peel Board Chair Janet McDougald, it was not the precedent-setting, wedge-wielding, slippery slope of descent into chaos that it was made out to be in a series of debates in the Legislature and in newspaper editorials and advocacy group newsletters.
The Mississauga Ward 1 and 7 trustee says the new policy was developed to provide a “transparent, accountable way” to deal with offers such as the one to supply the portable. The board will not be out beating the bushes for funds. Any offer that does come in will be subject to a “viability study” by staff and school council members. Only projects that were already planned, such as a science lab, will be approved.
The first issue to raise its head, predictably, was equity. Rich schools will raise more funds and the advantaged will become more so, goes the argument. Poor schools will be left to wallow in self-pity.
“In a perfect world, there would be adequate money to provide everything to everybody,” says McDougald, who was first elected in 1988. “People just want to come forward and support their local community and their local school.”
She uses a non-capital analogy as an example of what she means. in the past, groups have come forward to propose that breakfast programs be established at their local school.
“That might not have been the school that we would have been our first priority but do we say no because all the other schools don’t have a breakfast program?”
The new Peel board policy was a handy piece of floating driftwood for various stakeholders, who have their own political agendas in this pre-election period, to cling to.
Depending on your point of view, the adoption of the amended policy proved either that the government is grossly underfunding school boards (Opposition parties) or that $567,000 in fundraising across the province is actually an “end-run” around the prohibition on boards raising revenue through local taxes (People for Education.)
Trustees weren’t trying to make any groundbreaking policy statements here, they were just trying to provide a mechanism to deal with offers of financial assistance for local schools.
If a gym burns down, as it did at Lorne Park Public School several ago and the community picks up the challenge and wants to pay for it instead of taxpayers, is that such a terrible thing? In fact, it means that a project that would otherwise not have been funded elsewhere could still go ahead; perhaps in one of those needy areas where parents don’t have the time, energy of expertise to fund raise quite as well.
Why is it OK to fundraise for computers, books or musical instruments but not the physical spaces to put them in?
Since the days of the one-room school house, trustees have tended to be practical folks who worry more about meeting needs than splitting policy hairs. As long as there are safeguards in place to ensure that the funds are being spent on legitimate projects, it doesn’t seem the end of the world to help the neighbourhood do its best for its local school.
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The boundaries have changed, but the candidates haven’t.
Bob Delaney and Nina Tangri will tangle again in the upcoming provincial election. But rather than running against each other in Mississauga West, they’ll be contesting the new seat of Mississauga-Streetsville.
Tangri won a rather easy victory over local chiropractor Dr. Carlan Stants last night for the Conservative nomination at the Mississauga Convention Centre. About 500 members turned out to vote.