School board learning the basics

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2014 (4359 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mike Babinsky is at it, or should we say in it, again. The veteran Winnipeg School Division trustee, the longest-serving of a fairly new bunch, has been censured (again) not a month after the last election.

It is Mr. Babinsky’s third time in the dunce-cap corner, so to speak. His transgression: he gave the Free Press an email string from the administration. It included trustee Lisa Naylor’s shot at Babinsky’s “troubling” public accusations of board secrecy in the media, in which she also warns colleagues that “newspaper articles… are not fact and do not necessarily reperesent (sic) a balanced, objective view of events.”

Mr. Babinsky is all about transparency and holding the board to account for its decisions on spending and policy. He is nothing if not tenacious. He also seems to have trouble getting along with others.

But sometimes that serves the public’s interest.

This latest censure, an act of public shaming without penalty, has lent a little theatre to a serious issue. The Winnipeg school board has a long, sorry history of going in camera for discussions and votes that ought to be heard publicly. Pre-budget discussions, general deliberations on salaries and various matters unrelated to personnel or personal privacy have routinely become material for privileged ears only.

That has cut off the public’s ability to scrutinize why and who on the board has decided what — the board’s policy on recording votes requires agreement from two-thirds of trustees. How then does the electorate even start to hold their trustees to account?

It is thanks, largely, to Mike Babinsky’s dogged, lonely voice that the outrage has remained on the public agenda. And it was this very issue he dumped on the doorstep of Broadway, demanding that former education minister Nancy Allan and then her successor (also now former minister) James Allum confront the Winnipeg board for its egregious, instinctive use of what ought to be the rare-but-necessary option of going in camera, compounded by a tendency to use provincial privacy legislation to redact public records.

Little has come of the efforts to get the ministers involved — a meet and greet with new Education Minister Peter Bjornson descended into a bit of a mash as Mr. Babinsky used the occasion to demand action, pronto. Yet, there is reason to hope a new day may be dawning. Board chairman Mark Wasyliw has pledged to resist defaulting to in-camera sessions, and newly elected trustees have made similar noises.

As proof, perhaps, of the board’s new respect for democratic principles, it unanimously voted on Monday to scope out the costs and considerations of live streaming regular board and committee meetings, and archiving them online. It’s a step in the right direction, and may even rekindle taxpayers’ interest in a public body that has long failed to inspire engagement. Board meetings have for a long time been poorly attended by the public and, not surprisingly, most media pay little attention. The rapid decline in interest is evident in the stunningly low turnout at trustee byelections.

School boards, with their authority over schools and hefty power to tax property, deserve public attention. The discouraging deterioration in the academic performance of Manitoba students in the last decade is a red flag that something serious is amiss in the classrooms. Trustees are the most effective means by which taxpayers, collectively, can hold the feet of teachers and schools to the fire. But what kind of debate on this has happened at board meetings?

The Winnipeg school board must invite the public in. That will not happen if it can’t resist the temptation to go in camera when a little honest talk threatens to break out. It should put the meetings online, and make sure agendas are posted well in advance so parents and taxpayers are forewarned there might actually be reason, finally, to tune in.