Bill No. 72 - Education Reform Act - Second Reading
MR. SPEAKER: The honourable member for Dartmouth South.
MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, the minister and I agree on something. We agree that education, at its heart, is about our kids. It’s about children and about what’s best for our children, but it’s not enough to just say it’s about our kids, and hope we all look the other way and let the government do whatever they want to do, because the question I want to ask is, what will this change, this package of changes, do for our children?
The parents I’ve spoken with who have children in the public education system, who believe in the public education system, don’t share the optimism of the minister or of this government about these changes. They also don’t believe, as the minister said yesterday in this House, that this is the most important change in the history of education in Nova Scotia - at least they don’t believe it in the way that I think the minister intended it.
Let’s start for a moment by unpacking this very complex piece of legislation, since I and many other members of this House have been inundated with requests for clarity since the introduction of this bill yesterday. This is an omnibus bill, it’s 60 pages long. For many of us in this Chamber there is no recollection of a bill of this size being brought before this House, let alone with such speed. It’s an omnibus bill that covers four Acts - the Education Act, the Public School Administrators Employment Relations Act, the Teachers Collective Bargaining Act, and the Teaching Profession Act. You know what, if that sounds boring, I’m guessing that’s intentional.
I think the whole issue we have right now with this package of reforms is that it’s just complicated enough, it’s just boring enough, it’s just administrative enough that the government is gambling that people won’t quite be able to get their heads around it and oppose it in the way that it needs to be opposed. But myself and many of my colleagues, and our guests in the gallery, are here to say we stand in opposition to this bill.
So, what does the bill do? It does a lot of different things, but as others have said today, the key changes are that it dissolves all of the English language school boards, and it removes administrators, principals, and vice-principals and some others from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. These are sweeping changes.
Dr. Glaze delivered her report in January, but as the minister said today, the work on this began long ago. As the minister noted, these changes have been in the works for a long time and have in fact been part of various Liberal Party platforms. He also insists, in response to many of the comments that I just heard from my colleague the member for Dartmouth East and others of us who have been at pains to point out the great needs of children in classrooms, that this is not about classrooms - this is about administrative reform.
In fact, that’s not entirely the case, Mr. Speaker. If you look at the Glaze report, Recommendation 5 in fact, “Make all schools ‘wrap-around’ facilities, where students and families can promptly access support from any government department, not just for education, but also support from mental health professionals, health care providers, justice, family services, and so on.”
That’s about classrooms. That’s about students. That’s about what will help children every day as they go to school with the things that face them and the issues that they are dealing with. But that’s not one of the recommendations that was chosen to be implemented so quickly. That wasn’t thought of as urgent, although I suspect many of my constituents and Nova Scotians across this province would disagree with that.
Another recommendation in the Glaze report is to “Establish a dedicated unit in the Department, in collaboration with the Office of Immigration, for emerging immigrant communities in schools, with supports for students, teachers and parents.” I can’t tell you the number of stories I have heard from educators, parents, and children about the kids who show up in their classrooms partway through the year with no command of English, often traumatized from leaving a war zone, with zero support.
There’s a teacher in my constituency who recently retired who is volunteering for two hours a week at Dartmouth High. Those two hours a week are the only time that any of the numerous children at Dartmouth High School for whom English is a second language - and just barely a language at that - get any support. She said, I’m expected to sit in the library for two hours and help all of these teenagers with all of these academic subjects in a language that they don’t understand. Mr. Speaker, that’s not right, and to me, it constitutes an urgent situation.
But these urgent situations are not the ones that the government has chosen to address with this bill. Instead, they have decided to look at just the administrative aspects, and they are the administrative aspects that make it easier for the department to do what it wants to do. I’ll get to that in a moment.
I look forward, Mr. Speaker, to the Committee of the Whole House on Bills next week, where we can go through this legislation line by line. For now, I will stick to generalities.
I want to acknowledge - as my ever-generous colleague the Interim Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party did earlier - that there are some good aspects of this bill, and there was some compromise. There is no College of Teachers coming in, and based on what we have heard about the results of that in other jurisdictions, I believe that’s a good thing.
I also want to comment that, to the extent that any consultation was done on this bill, to the extent that any conversations were had - true to form, they were had after the announcement of these changes, after a public outcry, after pressure from those of us here in this Chamber and all of our constituents and the hundreds of letters that we have all received. Why does it have to be done that way? Why couldn’t we have consultation before the decision? I look forward to one day seeing a bill come from this Party that truly has behind it robust consultation. But I won’t hold my breath. (Applause)
One of the main issues that we have with this bill, Mr. Speaker, is the idea of educational equity. The minister has repeatedly referred to this bill as levelling the playing field. He insists that this standardization will help educational outcomes, that it will help narrow the achievement gap, and that it may help standardized test results. But again, my question is, will it help students? Will it help children?
As my colleague pointed out earlier, schools need to be a safe place. Yes, we send children to school to learn. Yes, we send children to school to achieve. But that is not my primary purpose for sending my children to school. My primary purpose, especially my young children, for sending them to school is to be in a safe place where they can be socialized, where they can learn, where they can be safe. Yes, we need to be able to make sure that our students are competitive. But I will say this now, and I will point it out later: no one - up until the introduction of this bill and Dr. Glaze’s erroneous assertion that our students are failing - had any deep concerns about the achievement gap or the educational outcomes of our students.
We have great geographical diversity across this province. The Leader of our Party has spoken about it in his remarks, and so have several others. This idea of standardizing all of the policies and the way in which those policies are delivered throughout the province is, I believe, frankly misguided. Do we want equality of resources across the province? Absolutely, we want equality of resources. Should all of those resources be delivered in exactly the same way? No.
There are specific local realities on the ground that those local communities and - up until tomorrow or the next day - the duly-elected representatives of those local communities on the school board should be able to make specific decisions around in order to best serve those communities.
Of course, this bill presents a huge and disastrous change for those racialized or otherwise marginalized students in our community. As has been pointed out in this Chamber already, we are moving from a system where African Nova Scotian communities and other communities can elect their own representatives to the school board to one where the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development will appoint those people - and once a person is appointed, what will they do? What will be their task? What will be the power that they have? It’s completely unclear.
So to argue that it’s tit for tat - yes, we’re losing the African Nova Scotian and indigenous reps on our school boards, but it’s okay because we’re going to appoint a couple of African Nova Scotians and we’re going to appoint a couple of Mi'kmaq. Also, that this 15-member board - I still can’t figure out from the legislation whether this board is in fact required to meet - will somehow take the place of the elected representation we have now is completely ridiculous, from my point of view.
Not to mention that the reason that has been given in this Chamber over and over for how this will improve the situation of racialized students - the minister has repeatedly referred to the achievement gap, that they are focused on the achievement gap, and that, even with the presence of dedicated representatives on the school board, we haven’t solved the achievement gap. Once again, I respectfully argue that the achievement gap is not the biggest issue facing racialized communities in this province.
There are a lot of other gaps. There are income gaps. There are service gaps. There are equality gaps. There’s rampant racism in this province. If we can get to a place where the only concern that those communities have is an achievement gap, then I think we’ll be a lot further ahead than we are right now.
I know in my own constituency I’ve heard wonderful things about the work that the African Nova Scotian representative on the school board has done for students and their parents who have faced bullying, who have faced racist incidents in their school, who are trying to challenge the school policies around what happens when there are racist incidents in our schools. Those are very sensitive issues. They’re sensitive and they’re specific and they require specific resources. Maybe the Executive Director of African Nova Scotian Affairs in his office or her office in Halifax is going to be able to respond to those kinds of specific issues from parents across the province, but somehow I doubt it.
For school boards in general, a lot has been said, but I think that many of the points bear repeating. School boards need reform. The Nova Scotia School Boards Association and the school boards themselves have been working hard on that reform. From my understanding, initially some of that reform was blocked by the department, because it’s always nice to have a fall guy. It’s always nice to have something that’s not really working well and that you can offload responsibility on.
But to be fair, in recent years, I think that the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development has been supporting that effort. I think it’s the National or International School Boards Association that is even meeting here in Nova Scotia this summer - funded by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development - to learn from the model of Nova Scotia’s school boards. I’m guessing they didn’t know about these changes when they booked the meeting date.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the government liked that the school boards made the hard choices. Who’s responsible for school closures? School boards. Don’t talk to us about it, talk to school boards. Who’s responsible for staffing Pre-Primary, when it was decided that Pre-Primary would be implemented tomorrow? School boards. Just long enough for all of the controversial decisions to be made, and then out go the school boards.
I’ll draw the members’ attention to the fact that when we were debating the pre-Primary bill in this Chamber, and we saw the bill, which only had four clauses, because from my point of view, it didn’t really need legislation. I thought, why are we debating this bill? We’re talking about introducing pre-Primary. Well, one of the clauses in the pre-Primary bill gave the minister the authority to enter into relationships with all of the different people that the school board currently enters into relationships with, financial and otherwise. I stood up in this House, Mr. Speaker, and I said, call me a conspiracy theorist, but I would guess that minister is thinking of dissolving the school boards. I invite him to respond to me. (Applause) I got some whoops and claps from my colleagues, and I got nothing from the minister, so yes, these plans have clearly been in place for a long time.
So, who’s going to be the fall guy for the government now, Mr. Speaker? Will it be the Provincial Advisory Council on Education? Maybe, but as the minister said yesterday, he wouldn’t consider that being an elected board, because who would want to join – it’s only advisory – insinuating that they wouldn’t have much power, anyway.
So, it’s hard to say who will be accountable to whom in the coming days, months, and years of the education system. Will the department and the decisions of the department, and that council be transparent? The school board decisions are transparent now. Will the meetings of the Provincial Advisory Council on Education be accessible, open, and public? The meetings of the school board are now. This is the only order of government, Mr. Speaker, where women are represented over 50 per cent. This is unbelievably important. We need more women in politics. We need more women at all levels of politics. (Applause)
When we talk about things like structural misogyny, or structural racism, people’s eyes glaze over, and they say, “oh, what is that? That’s some kind of academic speak.” That is what this is, Mr. Speaker. What gender makes up the predominant amount of the teaching profession? Women. What gender makes up the predominant amount of school administrators? Women. Who holds the preponderance of seats on school boards across this province? Women. So, is it a mistake that this is the order of government, that this is the union, that this is the group, that is being picked on and picked apart by this government? Maybe. Maybe consciously it is, but structurally, Mr. Speaker, it’s part of a pattern that has been going on for hundreds of years.
We’re being told that things will continue as they currently are. Superintendents will be regional executive directors, staff and offices will remain, we’ll have regional education centres instead of school board offices, but here’s a key and subtle difference – one which my former colleague, Cindy Littlefair, currently on the Halifax Regional School Board, pointed out – one of the most important, and least interesting to the public, jobs that a school board has right now is to hire a superintendent. The school board hires the superintendent. We elect the school board, the school board hires the superintendent, the superintendent administers the office for the benefit of the public and our children.
Not anymore, Mr. Speaker. The regional executive director will be appointed, hired, by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. So, if we’re worried about bloated civil service, if we’re worried about too much bureaucracy, I don’t see this as being any big change.
Speaking of lack of transparency, our Party introduced a bill earlier in the session around school capital decisions. Obviously, this is a very controversial issue across our province. I know my colleague from Cole Harbour-Eastern Passage raised this, there was a paused school review in that constituency, and there have been issues across the province.
We also know that despite the fact the school board puts in an inordinate amount of time consulting, having conversations, studying, deliberating about these decisions, those decisions can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen by Cabinet when they decide, as has happened recently, that instead of the list presented by the school board, that new schools should, in fact, be built in the ridings of Cabinet Ministers. While we don’t anticipate that that will change any time soon, Cabinet is invested with certain powers and those powers are there, often for good reasons. What we’re asking for is transparency about those decisions.
When a minister or a Cabinet makes the decision to override a perfectly sensible, thought-out and consultative list of where to build schools, we should know why because if we don’t know why, guess what we’re going to think? We’re going to think it’s getting built because it’s in the Cabinet Minister’s district. What else are we supposed to think, because we’re not given any other information?
That’s the issue that we have now, but that issue will only get worse because at least now we have school review processes, at least now we know when those decisions are being made at the outset and so we can track those decisions, and when those decisions do not get implemented, we can question them - we can ask why.
We have no idea what school capital construction will look like now. Open a school? Close a school? Not happy that you can close a school? Well, we know recently that in Petite Riviere they had a judicial review of a decision to close a school and they were successful - but do you know what? If the decision had never been made and made publicly by an elected body to close that school, there would have been no judicial review. That avenue would not have been available to them, Mr. Speaker. It is my very strong hope that we leave that door open for transparency in these decisions as these changes go forward.
The minister has repeatedly said that this change is not about cost savings - and that’s good because there won’t be any. Yes, we’ll save $2 million in stipends, partly because we are going to write off putting all those stipends forward to current board members in this fiscal year. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I guess.
We are going to have three councils that are going to potentially meet more often. We’re going to have the Provincial Advisory Council on Education that will meet, that will presumably get stipends, that will presumably have expenses. There will be two new full-time positions in the department in the form of executive directors, which I hope will, in fact, be hired.
The estimate is that we will need up to 30 new full-time teachers to fill the gap for the administrators who are teaching more than 50 per cent now and will be excluded from doing that - and the list goes on and on and on, Mr. Speaker.
There are still folks out there in the public who are crying foul at the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and at us for being fiscally irresponsible. To those people I say, put your feet up, light a fire, spend some time with the 60 pages of this bill and the Glaze report and you will certainly see that there are no cost savings here.
I was glad to see that the minister and the Premier finally met with the union and with other stakeholders last week. It was late, but it was important. We have averted a strike, but I think it would be fair to say that the trust between teachers and government remains broken or, at least, very severely wounded.
The minister has spoken over and over in the days past, and this afternoon in this Chamber, about teaching excellence - that teaching excellence is the key determinant of student success in the classroom. Madam Speaker, I contend that teachers cannot be excellent if they are miserable and disrespected. We know the majority of teachers in this province - 82.5 per cent of those who voted, the last I checked - have described themselves as feeling just that way. So, I would invite, exhort, beg, the government to do something to repair that trust because, I assure you, you will get this bill passed and you will make these changes, but at what expense and at whose?
For all your big plans, if those teachers remain miserable, if those teachers remain disrespected, if those teachers feel bullied, they’re going to have the exact same success in the classroom that disrespected, bullied, anxious children have, and that’s not much at all.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I’ve heard directly from hundreds of Nova Scotians on this issue. I’ve gotten emails, I’ve gotten phone calls, I’ve gotten messages over social media. Many are in my district but many more live across the province. Many live in the ridings of members of the government Party whose members either wouldn’t respond to their emails, would respond with talking points, or would simply mute them. They all expressed very heartfelt concerns and one out of the several hundred expressed any support at all for the actions of the government.
So, although I said earlier I’m not going to hold my breath for meaningful consultation, I would say a general poll might just do it, actually. You might not need meaningful conversation, you might just need to pay attention, Madam Speaker, to the general sentiment of the public.
The other thing I want to say is that these reforms have been tried. When Dr. Glaze presented these recommendations, she called it a “made in Nova Scotia” solution. It’s not a “made in Nova Scotia” solution, it’s a “made in Ontario” solution, it’s a “made in Scotland solution”, it’s a “made in New Zealand” solution, it’s a “made in the United States of America” solution which, respectfully, Madam Speaker, I think is just about the last place we want to be looking for educational reform at this moment. It’s a corporate, bureaucratic model that is centralized, that has been tried, and that has failed in almost every place where it has been introduced.
In all these places I mentioned these reforms have led to greater labour disputes, greater teacher dissatisfaction, and a general erosion of the public school system. But it does create an opportunity. Do you know what it creates an opportunity for, Madam Speaker? Private involvement in public education. I won’t be the first one to say that these reforms, which again, the government has gone to pains to say have been in the works for a long time, are completely of a piece of the reforms that have been suggested by groups such as Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and other corporate interests in our province.
The private sector is eager to have a part in education and for some, that might seem great. “Oh, I’ve heard great things about charter schools, aren’t those the really good schools that you go to - they are still public schools but they’re really good?” “Yes, my kid is smart, I know how to work the system, I’ll get my kid into the charter school.” “Great, P3 construction, awesome, we can stay in the black, we can balance the budget, we can make sure to have these great, fancy schools.”
But what about the kids who aren’t in the charter schools? What about the kids who can’t get into the charter schools? What about the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill for the P3 schools? What about the other people, Madam Speaker? We are concerned with the other people, with all of the people.
I want to see a system in Nova Scotia that is the envy of the country, that is the envy of the world. The minister accuses us of defending the status quo. Not so. We are advocating for the reforms that will serve our students. I refute the idea, also, that this package of reforms will somehow pave the way to implement the results of the Commission on Inclusion. We’ve heard the minister and the Premier himself say this. Not once, in the number of months since the Commission on Inclusion was struck, have I heard anyone - not this government, no MLAs, not a single member of the public - lament “oh, I can’t wait to hear the results of that commission, but boy, I hope the NSTU and the school boards don’t provide big barricades to its implementation.”
It was just never an issue. As with many other things in this package of policies, it’s a solution to a problem that never existed.
The government has signalled that these things would be barriers. They would not. The teachers are fighting to have resources in their classrooms. The school boards understand better than anyone the challenges of our school system. To scapegoat families, desperate for supports in the classroom, and attempt to silence their criticism by spreading the word, be onboard with these changes and it will help to pave the way for the commission, is a cheap PR tactic, Madam Speaker.
Make no mistake: this does make things easier for the government and the minister. It makes all things easier. We can be happy about the commission, that’s a good one, but what about the bad ones? We’ve seen that this government is not afraid to ram through its agenda, regardless of roadblocks and public opinion. So, forgive me for not being too excited at the loss of checks and balances in these changes.
Yesterday, the minister called this the single most important educational reform in Nova Scotian history. Is it? Or is it a solution in search of a problem, a solution to exactly none of the myriad issues identified by teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members. This won’t save money; it won’t make teachers happy; and it won’t improve the day-to-day experience of children in the classroom. It disappears, or in the words of my colleague “vaporizes an entire order of democratic governance.” It weakens the voice of rural communities, of racialized communities, and of women - but, forgive me for being negative.
Our education system needs reform. It needs reform that puts our children at the very centre - not their test scores, but their whole little beings, their hopes and dreams, their tears and triumphs. Our children are not clients, they are children. Let’s start paying attention to what they really need - instead of alienating the people they rely on most, their teachers, and using them as an excuse to weaken our democratic institutions.
MADAM SPEAKER: The honourable member for Pictou Centre.
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