November 25, 2019

On passion and purpose

Public school board trustees are passionate about a lot of things. We are passionate about our students and making sure they have the tools and resources to achieve their academic goals and reach their full potential. Our public schools embrace all children of the province.

We are passionate about our teachers, staff and leaders in our schools and school jurisdictions. We want to make sure they have the training, tools and resources they need to educate our students.

And we’re passionate about something called “preserving the autonomy of locally-elected school boards.”

So, why are we passionate about this autonomy, and what does it have to do with students and education?

As it turns out, autonomy has everything to do with students and education.

We are elected locally, just like municipal, provincial and federal politicians. In fact, local public school board trustee elections are held concurrent with municipal elections. In a lot of cases, when you go to a polling station to vote for your municipal elected official of choice, you are also marking your ballot for your chosen public school board trustee or trustees.

We urge every citizen to engage in this vital enterprise and exercise their right to vote for a candidate who supports a strong and vibrant public education system. We also ask that sitting trustees identify citizens in their home communities who may be considering putting their name forward and mentor them through the process. Let this be your legacy.

In a democratic society it’s also an immense privilege and responsibility for us as locally-elected public school board trustees. Because we have been elected in our local communities – by parents, teachers, staff and people passionate about K-12 education – we hear first-hand from you about what’s most important to you, and what you want us to remember as we make decisions on how best to allocate our school jurisdiction’s portion of a more than $8.2 billion provincial K-12 education budget.

We were elected because you want us to make decisions on your behalf – not municipal politicians, and not provincial politicians. Public trustees work hard on your behalf on important issues, but as public school board trustees the only thing we work on and are dedicated to is K-12 education in your community. And you bet we’re passionate about that!

So the autonomy – or independence – of locally-elected public school board trustees is crucial to us being able to properly work on behalf of our communities, to ensure our students get the best possible education and our staff and leaders have the tools and resources they need to deliver that education. If our independence is taken away, or if another order of government – municipal or provincial – tries to take over our job, the needs of individual and local communities may be overshadowed by other concerns.

For instance, we talk a lot about needing to make sure there is enough funding for each new student who enrolls in an Alberta public school to have a proper education. We are so passionate about this need, and it’s the heart of our purpose as locally-elected school board trustees. We don’t want to see overcrowded classrooms, insufficient learning tools or not enough teachers and instructional aides. We want teachers to be properly trained to educate the students in their classrooms. We want to see enough funding to meet complex student learning needs, for students to receive proper nutrition so they can learn, and for efficient student busing so kids don’t spend two or more hours a day in travel time just trying to get to and from school. And it’s important that we talk about these issues, and how we can all work together as locally-elected public school board trustees to benefit all our students.

We don’t operate in a vacuum though, and we are accountable to Alberta Education as well as to the communities that elected us. We’re also passionate about something called “fiduciary responsibility” – the ways in which we are accountable to the provincial government for the decisions we make. But that will be a subject for a future blog post.

Suffice to say, we’re passionate about what we do, and who we serve. They are our purpose. At the end of the day, it’s all about our students!