Visit any major school board’s website, and you will find plenty of lip service to putting students first. But you won’t often see it in practice.
For example, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) in southern Ontario recently released its new strategic plan. The plan’s key feature is an inverse organizational chart which puts students at the top and administrators at the bottom.
Apparently, this is supposed to send a clear message that WRDSB puts students first.
However, the gesture is totally meaningless. Students in WRDSB do not have the ability to hire and fire the director of education, nor can they decide what time they want the school day to begin.
Putting students at the top of an organizational chart is a good example of useless virtue signaling that will do nothing to help students become better-educated citizens.
Meanwhile, the Halton District School Board (HDSB), also in southern Ontario, has a vision statement that claims, “Every student will explore and enhance their potential, passions, and strengths to thrive as contributing global citizens.”
No doubt HDSB wants parents and other taxpayers to believe that it prioritizes the needs of students when making decisions. But if HDSB really puts students first, why does it continue to defend the infamous teacher who wears giant prosthetic breasts while teaching shop classes?
It was students who leaked photos of this teacher wearing an obviously inappropriate outfit that violated the students’ dress code. The trustees wouldn’t have defended his behaviour if they cared about how students felt.
Unfortunately, instead of addressing the problem, the director of education submitted a report to his board saying that it would not be a good idea to introduce a staff dress code. Apparently, imposing any sort of dress code on teachers “would expose the Board to considerable liability.”
By taking no action against this teacher, HDSB has chosen to put the interests of this inappropriately dressed teacher ahead of its students. A board that truly values students would ensure that teachers dress like professionals. One can only imagine how awkward it must be for students to be taught by someone dressed in such an outrageous way.
Simply put, there is nothing student-centred about refusing to enforce basic workplace standards for students, teachers, and other school employees.
To make matters worse, students across Ontario are currently being held hostage by education unions that are threatening to go on strike, once again, if they don’t get what they want.
Despite being offered a more than 15 percent raise over four years, CUPE plans to withdraw its services on Monday, Nov. 21. Several large school boards have already announced that their schools will close if this happens.
Once again, students are being used as pawns in a labour dispute. Hopefully, the Ford government takes decisive action to ensure that schools remain open. That would be the student-centred thing to do.
As if students don’t have enough to worry about, there is also a concerted push by some Ottawa school trustees to mandate masks once again. A mask mandate would have a profoundly negative effect on students, particularly young students who rely on facial cues to understand their teachers and fellow students.
Students have suffered enough over the last two-and-a-half years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last thing they need is to be forced to wear masks at school. It would make far more sense if trustees focused on things that actually matter to students like the curriculum and the quality of teaching.
What students need right now is a solid academic education. Ontario students performed poorly on their latest provincial math assessments and their reading scores are declining as well.
Sadly, some school boards appear to be more interested in pushing woke ideology on students than in making sure their teachers are doing a good job of teaching.
For example, a recent survey sent out by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to its Grades 4-8 students asked them whether they are bisexual, transgender, queer/gender expansive, intersex, asexual, or pansexual. One can only imagine how much money and time was wasted creating this survey that most students would probably not even understand.
Here’s a novel idea. Perhaps TDSB administrators could put more effort into finding out why its students are underperforming in math and reading and less time encouraging teachers to push woke ideology.
Putting students’ educational needs first should be more than a meaningless slogan. School boards already spend far too much time focusing on things that have nothing to do with student achievement.
Students really do need to be put first. This means keeping schools open, letting kids learn normally, and ensuring that they learn the academic basics. This is what student-centred education looks like.
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