Can it happen here?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The university of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Anti-racism, sex education, gender identity, health and safety, and climate science are just some of the issues dividing candidates for school trustee positions in the United States. The rudeness and crudeness of electoral contests at the national and state levels are increasingly infecting local school board electoral contests.

That such issues are arising in the US signals to me that citizens there lack a fundamental understanding of the responsibilities of school boards as stewards of the public school system. The division among candidates about the issues indicates that they believe it is the job of a school board to determine the course of study and classroom instruction. However, in many – if not all – states in the US, responsibility for policy regarding such matters as academic standards, curriculum, instructional materials, assessments, and accountability typically resides in a state board of education not with local school boards.

School board candidates in Canada hold similar misapprehensions about the responsibilities of school trustees. You can see this from their campaign material. Candidates who appeal for support by promising to “fix the schools” or to “take back the schools” or offer more arts and music or STEM are promising what they cannot deliver. As is the case in most US states, responsibility for curriculum rests with provincial and territorial ministries or departments of education - not with local boards of education.

In fact, most school or education acts stipulate that it is the responsibility of school boards to ensure that all students within the region served by the board receive the basic education program. The basic program is usually spelled out in provincial regulation, supported by a curriculum framework of goals and objectives with delineated required topics or alternatives, approved instructional support material, and specified time and credit allocations. Trustees do not determine these; they provide oversight to the superintendent or director whose responsibility it is to ensure compliance with provincial or state directives.

When newly elected trustees take office, they are often surprised to discover that matters such as those being contested by school board candidates in the United States are beyond their control. Many are frustrated by this discovery. Some come to understand the role of trustee better and can acclimate to the demands of the office. Others complain about the constraints and condemn those – often the superintendent or the director of education – who attempt to educate the trustees about the constraints and opportunities of the office. Some believe that they can overcome the guardrails established for the position by publicly chastising school board staff and criticizing their fellow trustees who attempt to enforce the rules and regulations.

I’ve written that, while some Canadian school board elections are fiercely competitive, most receive little attention from eligible voters. Voter turnout in municipal elections is modest. Voter turnout for school boards even more so. Low voter turn out makes it easier for a renegade group to sweep control of a school board.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, has 72 school boards that have a total of 688 trustees. In 2018, there were slightly more than two candidates for each available seat. But only two thirds of the seats were contested (436/688). The remaining third of the seats (247) was filled (“acclaimed” in electoral terms) by trustees who ran unopposed, of whom more than three-quarters (192) were incumbents.

2018 Ontario School Board Election Results	Totals
available seats	688
candidates seeking election	1527
trustees acclaimed	247
trustees elected	436
returning trustees	429
new trustees	254
trustees newly elected who were unopposed	55
returning trustees elected who were unopposed	192
newly elected trustees	199
returning elected trustees.	237

 I’ll be interested to see if the contests for school boards begin to mimic those in the United States. My hunch is that they won’t.

Several things distinguish Canada from the US. For instance, the vaccination roll-out and safety protocols, while not always handled well or uniformly across jurisdictions, seem to be less contentious in Canada. While some politicians, most notably in Alberta and Saskatchewan, have bowed to pressure from their vocal political supporters to resist the imposition of either the vaccines or the masks, most of the electorate in both provinces seem united in support of those measures. At the Federal level, one candidate attempted to define vaccination and personal protection as a matter of individual liberty. He increased his vote marginally over the previous election but did not win the seat for which he was running.

Another difference between Canada and the United States is that Canadians are generally more accepting and trusting of government institutions. They are also more willing to accept that individual interests must be balanced by collective responsibilities. A third is that public policy differences are relatively more nuanced than sharply divisive. Canadian policy preferences are decidedly centrist as evidenced by the similarities among the policies of most of Canada’s major parties. For example, racism is more polarizing in the United States than it is in Canada and Canadian citizens are seemingly more willing to acknowledge institutional racism than those in the US.

If it were not for some of these moderating factors, rudeness, crudeness, and polarization could eventually become characteristic of Canadian politics at the school board level. But first, they would become evident at the federal and provincial levels. Canada is not there, yet. Fortunately.