By Jay Aspin, Near North School Board chairman.
I believe it would be helpful if I took a moment to update you of some of the background with regard to board process on this issue:
During the last school board election, the majority of board members campaigned on a promise to revisit the previous board’s decision (3 into 2) Clearly the process appeared to be flawed and necessitated a “revisit”.
Immediately after being sworn in our new board began this process. We held two four-hour workshops in March and April focusing on all details of the decision. We were, in fact, ready as a board to move forward with a revisit in May of this year however, a critical piece was missing. The board had not received the Ombudsman’s Report which was announced in October of last year.
We received the preliminary report in May with the final report released in July. The report validated our sentiments.
Relative to the 3:2 …. Recommendation # 6 stated “ The Near North District School Board should prepare a new final staff report that explains the additional information received in the summer of 2017 and that was discussed in private in September 2017. It should present the report to trustees as part of a public meeting afford community members an opportunity to comment on it, and then take a new vote on the secondary school consolidation.”
Our board accepted all 14 recommendations of the report Recommendation # 6 became the board’s marching orders relative to the 3:2 consolidation.
- A new staff report was presented at a Special Public Meeting of the board on August 19th
- The complete report and attached documentation was immediately posted to the board website giving the public an opportunity to review and provide comments
- Parties who wished to speak to the secondary school consolidation were requested to register with the Board office by 12 pm Friday, September 6, 2019.
- The Board of Trustees will re-vote on the secondary school consolidation at the September 24 meeting at 6 pm our next Board meeting.
- Comments were compiled and presented to the Board at our meeting Tuesday night - September 10 Committee of the Whole meeting.
All this is to say:
- This revisit of the former board’s secondary school consolidation has been an exhaustive and detailed process (excess of 9 months to date)
- Trustees will RE-VOTE on this decision …they won’t RE-ARC. This is solely a decision about whether the former board made the right decision. We know the process was flawed.
- Our board is adamant that this issue has lingered much too long. In the last two years since this issue has not been deferred our board has lost about $7 million in funding.
Clearly, we are losing funding, we are losing educational programming and we are losing students to adjacent boards.
Our board is adamant that the final decision on this file be made on September 24. Our trustees are adamant this will happen “Come hell or high water”
Jay Aspin
