School boards have to go, says Coalition de l’avenir’s Legault

Former PQ cabinet minister François Legault, who’s been touring the province test marketing his fledgling political movement which goes by the name Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec, was at the Château Royal in Laval to float some of his ideas on Oct. 12.

Four-point agenda
They include putting Quebec sovereignty aside while more pressing problems are dealt with; a major overhaul of the public education system; restructuring public health care; and providing motivation for a more entrepreneurial spirit to flourish in Quebec so the economy can take off.
Legault would also like to do a major house cleaning at Hydro Quebec, where the number of employees has risen from 12,000 during the 1960s to 23,600 now. In the health care system, a decentralization similar to that in the education system would be allowed.
A thing that becomes quickly evident when one attends an event featuring Legault as speaker is that he has the gift of the gab. A veteran of several PQ governments, Legault served as Minister of Education, Minister of Health and Social Services and Minister for Industry and Commerce.
Legault can be very plain-spoken while trying to get across some of his basic points. “You don’t have to be a sovereignist to love Quebec,” he said. While he claims to still be a sovereignist himself, Legault admits that the chances of a sovereignty referendum resulting in a yes vote are virtually nil now.

Sovereignty out
His argument is that Quebec won’t be able to get sovereignty until its economy improves to the point where the province is making equalization payments to the rest of the country, rather than receiving them as is the case now. Some of Legault’s proposals for the education system come in response to a problem that is reaching crisis proportions – namely the skyrocketing high-school drop-out rate. In Quebec today, one out of five youths leaves high-school before finishing.
With several professional educators in the audience, and with Chantal Longpré, president of the Fédération québécoise des directions d’établissements d’enseignement, as a signed supporter of the Coalition’s charter, Legault laid out what he said is the only measure being proposed that would cost money: raising the salaries of Quebec’s public school teachers by 20 per cent. In return, they would have to submit to regular performance evaluations.
A more significant part of the education overhaul would involve decentralizing the system and giving individual schools, teachers and administrators more freedom from the constraints currently imposed by school boards. Legault takes specific aim at the boards, of which there are 69 with tens of thousands of employees.

An idyllic vision
Recalling his own idyllic youth being taught grammar by a beloved grade school teacher in St-Anne-de-Bellevue, Legault had an alternative vision. “Neighbourhood schools” would be free to make most administrative decisions on their own, without having to submit to the million and one rules and regulations under school boards.
Reacting to Legault’s comments, Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board chairman Steve Bletas said, “It’s interesting how when he was Minister of Education I dealt with him, and he felt school boards were doing an excellent job.”
According to Bletas, neighbourhood schools would be impractical in parts of the SWLSB’s territory which is largely rural. “You have a school in Lachute, but if the population coming to that school is from so many different areas, that’s not a neighbourhood school, that’s a regional school.”
While Bletas didn’t disagree with Legault’s suggestion about raising educators’ salaries, he couldn’t see the wisdom of disempowering school boards. “Quebec teachers are the lowest-paid teachers in all of Canada,” he said. “But in terms of everything else, who’s going to control all of that? Is each school going to pay teachers? And what if a principal doesn’t like certain teachers? I mean, school boards are there for a reason.”