Advocacy – Part 2

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 

In last week’s blog, I wrote that advocacy with provincial governments is typically handled poorly by most school boards in part because school boards fail to appreciate that they are in an asymmetrical relationship to provincial governments. A second reason that efforts at advocacy are often unsuccessful is that those efforts are often poorly planned. To succeed, advocacy must be part of a carefully conceived and executed plan.

Careful consideration must be given to the desired outcome. Asking whether it is possible to achieve the outcome is an important and often unasked question. Does the body one is trying to persuade possess the authority and capacity to produce the outcome? Asking a body for something that it lacks the authority to produce cannot succeed. For example, a body that is a party to a contract cannot provide or produce an outcome that will require it to change the contract to which it is committed without the agreement of the other parties to the contract. Asking government for additional funding after it has passed its budget is unlikely to succeed because it requires altering a decision to which the government has committed itself. 

Asking for something of which other school boards also believe they are deserving puts the government in an awkward position. It cannot give to one board something that all or most boards believe they need. And asking a government to do something that is contrary to their political commitments is also unrealistic.

The challenges that school boards face in advocating with senior governments are formidable and numerous. All school boards have limited resources (time, money, and personnel) they can dedicate to advocacy efforts. Resources are even more limited in smaller boards.  Governments have many competing priorities. Health care, housing affordability, poverty reduction, homelessness, and climate change are more likely to be ahead of education on government’s agenda.

Education – like most public issues – occurs in a complex policy landscape that most school boards do not consider when they decide to advocate for their interests. How does the issue about which the school board wishes to advocate align with government’s beliefs and commitments? Can addressing the issue that the school board wishes to have addressed help government achieve its priorities and commitments? Supply the evidence.

Advocacy efforts are inherently political. They are about whose values will be approved and supported, and whose will not. It is important to understand the interests and agendas at play. The campaign is not simply the “ask.” The campaign must include consideration of how, to whom, and by whom the request will be made. I’ll address these issues in my next blog.

Advocacy – Part 1

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

The 2022-2026 Good Governance Guide, produced by the not-for-profit Ontario Education Services Corporation, is a practical, if lengthy, guide to the work of governing and managing Ontario’s four publicly funded education systems: English Public, English Catholic, French Public and French Catholic.

The guide speaks to the many responsibilities of boards of education. Although focused on Ontario, there is much of value for publicly funded education systems across Canada. However, there is one topic that I wish the Guide had addressed more thoroughly: advocacy. Advocacy is something too often misunderstood and poorly executed by school boards – especially advocacy with senior levels of government.

Advocacy with provincial governments is typically handled poorly by most school boards. Many – I am tempted to say most – advocacy efforts that school boards make with provincial governments are unsuccessful or worse because the school boards fail to appreciate that they are in an asymmetrical relationship to provincial governments. Provincial governments have the power to create school boards, make legislation or regulation affecting school boards, and fund school boards.

Although it should be obvious, it is worth pointing out that it is imprudent and unlikely to be successful for school boards to threaten provincial governments. Some school boards believe that they can or are put in a position where they feel it is necessary for them to “take on the government” to satisfy some constituency. Boards that have tried to threaten provincial governments are simply ignored or sometimes dissolved.

School boards that have been dismissed because they threatened provincial governments believing that “standing up” to the government was making an important point for the citizens/students fail to consider two things. First, most citizens do not know what school boards do (or should do and often do not) or care about school boards. Very few citizens can name the trustees on the school boards that serve them. Second, “standing up to government” is a pyrrhic victory because, having been removed from office, the board no longer exercises its powers.

School board trustees are typically elected by the smallest voter turnouts of any elected officials.  In the 1950s and 1960s public education ranked among the highest priorities of the electorate because of the post-war baby boom. Most families had children in schools and the population could be mobilized to support increases in school funding. Social conditions are different today. Today, parents with school aged children are a relatively small percentage of the electorate; many of the most affluent and influential citizens enroll their children in private schools.

If threatening senior government doesn’t work, what does? Clear, logical, and well evidenced arguments have the greatest potential, but constructing the argument is only part of an effective advocacy campaign. Effective advocacy depends upon a series of coordinated actions designed to achieve the intended outcome. In next week’s blog, I explore the components of such campaigns.