When a review of a B.C. school board’s activities results in 42 scathing recommendations and when the source of those recommendations is Elizabeth Watson, QC, an acknowledged expert in corporate governance, school boards across the province might do well to sit up and take notice.
Watson has more than 30 years of experience as a lawyer, and for the past 10 years, her firm has been advising boards, committees and CEOs from all sectors on governance and board-recruitment issues.
Another day, another school board dismissed. This time it was the entire North Okanagan-Shuswap school board relieved of their duties and replaced by a single official trustee, who will exclusively manage the school district for at least one year.
Former Surrey School District superintendent Mike McKay has been appointed by Education Minister Mike Bernier to replace the board.
The dismissal follows the release of Watson’s report into the governance of the board in the wake of a financial scandal where, over a period of time, more than $10 million was transferred from the school district’s operating fund to pay for the costs of the new $9-million school-district administration building. At the same time, the board was cutting educational programs and considering school closures, citing a lack of operational funds.
But that, apparently, was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise.
Watson’s report focused on board accountability and evaluation mechanisms and on the board’s capacity with respect to fiscal management, including the budgeting process, capital planning and monitoring of financial results as well as the board’s negative relationships with district management.
Most recently, alarm bells in the minister’s office signalled that three of nine trustees had given their notice of resignation, and board meetings had degenerated to the point where there appeared to be little decorum.
The Watson report is specific in its findings about the dysfunctional nature of the board, including that “there is a lack of a strong governance framework for the district and a lack of clarity as to the role of the board and individual trustees.”
Not one to mince words, Watson found “a complete absence of financial expertise on the board, and a very minimal level of financial literacy, which has contributed to poor understanding by the board of financial results and activities.”
The report noted “a lack of trust amongst trustees, and an eroding level of trust that some trustees have in the information and recommendations brought forward by senior management” — all this in a toxic working atmosphere where “individual trustees often put the needs of the region they represent, and who elect them, before the needs of the district as a whole.”
A properly functioning school board serves an important purpose in a decentralized system, the alternative being the centralization of all decision-making about local public education, which would then be controlled by faceless bureaucrats in Victoria.
But when a competent analysis such as Watson’s finds “a lack of perceived transparency by the board, which is compounded by the number of in-camera meetings coupled with insufficient time and mechanisms to respond to the public’s questions and other related factors,” that is the beginning of the end.
Lack of experience is one thing, but when there exists, as Watson found in Salmon Arm, “[the] absence of a long-term strategy and vision, making the decision-making process more challenging in the absence of a set of guiding principles,” the whole structure quickly falls apart and the proper business of the district is lost in the ad hoc melee.
Watson is correct when she emphasizes that “districts operate in a complex environment, requiring the management of multi-stakeholder groups, multimillion-dollar budgets, competing demands on limited resources and delivery of modern and changing curriculum and pedagogical strategies,” and that “trustees need to be able to meet and exceed the expectations of those who elected them through sound and reliable governance practices.”
The report should be mandatory reading for all school trustees.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
