Public education parental support organization disappears after 70 years

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2024 (679 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The advocacy organization that has been supporting parent councils and lobbying the provincial government on caregiver concerns over the last 70 years has gone dark.

The Manitoba Association of Parent Councils lost its charitable status on Sept. 7, according to records from the Canada Revenue Agency that show MAPC has failed to file up-to-date information.

MAPC’s website was taken down ahead of back-to-school season. Its last-known office has been vacated and social media pages are inactive.

Executive director Brenda Brazeau, the sole employee, did not respond to requests for comment on the status of the organization she’s overseen since 2019.

“The board of directors has chosen not to proceed with funding from the province (Manitoba Education) and to seek outside funding,” Brazeau wrote to the head of the department’s inclusion support branch on March 8.

“I would like to point out that this does not mean that MAPC will not continue to be the ‘parental voice in education.’”

At the time, Brazeau indicated MAPC had faced questions about a perceived conflict of interest in recent years — specifically around Bill 64, the Pallister government’s failed attempt to replace elected school boards with a central authority — because it was funded primarily by the province.

A provincial grant totalling $106,800 accounted for 77 per cent of the organization’s revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, according to the latest national charity data available via the federal government.

That figure has remained unchanged since 2017, except for a cut to $94,400 in 2021 that occurred during widespread government austerity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The organization runs via nominal membership fees and donations.

Brazeau added in her letter that the provincial funding contract mandated MAPC work strictly with parent advisory councils when its purpose has always been to support PACs and individual parents, as well as addressing other issues.

Asked about MAPC’s apparent disappearance, the NDP’s cabinet communications director released the March letter that was received about a month before the Kinew government published Budget 2024.

The Home and School and Parent-Teacher Federation of Manitoba was founded in 1954. Its membership voted to change the organization’s name in 1995.

“It was a group where you could go and say, ‘This is where we’re struggling,’ but it was mostly (facilitating) other PACs helping PACs — I think that’s the part that will be missed the most,” said Crystal Webster, a mother of four who has spent much of the last 12 years attending meetings and organizing fundraising initiatives at elementary schools in Winnipeg.

In Webster’s experience, MAPC was fairly hands-off and focused on procedural basics for councils that were getting up and running. She said she would have liked to see the organization be more proactive about reaching out to new PACs.

The charity has historically been run by a single employee and volunteer board of directors.

Arlene Reid, president of the board until 2022 — and the last person to hold that position, according to government records — and former executive director Naomi Kruse told the Free Press they were unaware of MAPC’s status.

Rick McQuay, who owns 825 Henderson Hwy. — MAPC’s last known headquarters — said the former tenant was “excellent.”

“I couldn’t ask for better, to be honest,” said McQuay, who noted MAPC moved out of the Rossmere-area office prior to the beginning of the school year.

The landlord said Brazeau, who worked out of the building for a year, informed him in the spring that she would not be renewing the organization’s lease because of funding challenges.

The charity has long been viewed as a key partner in public education matters, alongside the teachers’ union, associations representing school boards, school business officials and superintendents and, more recently, the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre.

In recent years, Brazeau has served as a parent representative on the province’s poverty and education task force and education funding model review team.

“MAPC has worked very hard to cultivate formal parent voice through relationships with school parent councils and was often asked to speak on behalf of that group,” said Sandy Nemeth, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association.

“If they’re not that collective voice now, who is?”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Letter from MAPC