Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
The phrase "man bites dog" is an example of a journalistic aphorism that means unusual events are newsworthy. One rarely finds a ‘man bites dog’ story in education, but just such a story jumped out at me from one of the education newsfeeds that I read.
The headline “Superintendent applauded for school closure plan” caught my attention for two reasons. One, I do not recall many instances in which attendees at a school board meeting applauded the superintendent. Two, the audience was applauding the superintendent’s presentation of a long-range facilities strategy . . . wait for it . . . that included a proposal to close three schools in the Okanagan Skaha School District (#67).
As I understand it, the plan presented by the superintendent proposed to reallocate funds to educational programming by reducing the inefficiency of building use. The superintendent's presentation of the plan to trustees and the public was met with unexpected applause, signaling broad support for a plan that would normally arouse anxieties about or significant opposition to school closures.
There are several reasons I am writing about this apart from the ‘man bites dog’ dimension. First, to earn the support of an audience and board for a plan that would typically engender hostility implies to me that the superintendent and his senior team had communicated clearly and transparently with the board and the audience. Second, the support the plan received implied that the board and the audience recognized the benefits that reallocated funding from closing under-utilized facilities would bring students outweighed the immediate anxieties that school closures typically arouse.
When I read the story, I, too, applauded both the superintendent and the board. I applauded the Superintendent and senior team for their willingness to expend the effort to present a plan that nine times out of ten generates hostility. I applauded the Board for its recognition that underutilized facilities require resources (about $1.5 million in this case) that are better spent on programming for students. Too often boards in a similar position would be unwilling to make such a decision.
My guess is that
the audience likely had people in it who had attended the schools affected by
the closures or who have children in those schools. If my hunch is correct, the
audience reaction likely means that the trustees who made what I think was the
right decision are unlikely to be punished at the ballot box. But, even if they
are, they made the right decision to put students before their own political
interests or ambitions. Bravo!