August 25, 2009 4:40 PM
Two days before he officially takes on his provincially-appointed position as the new supervisor of Toronto's beleaguered Catholic school board, Richard Alway is already looking toward a future in which his role is no longer necessary.
"The real goal with this assignment is to work my way out of a job," the former president of St. Michael's College said on Tuesday, declining to speculate how long his tenure will last. "I didn't ask for this assignment...It will be up to the Minister when the job is done."
Alway's appointment this week came on the heels of the sudden resignation last Friday of Norbert Hartmann and Norm Forma, who were installed by the province back in June 2008 amidst a trustee spending scandal and unbalanced budget woes.
"A lot of the heavy lifting has already been accomplished for me," Alway added, lauding his predecessors for their accomplishments.
Charged primarily with getting the cash-strapped board's financial house back in order, Hartmann and Forma were further praised by the Ministry of Education for not only successfully implementing a two-year budget plan that's projected to eliminate the deficit 16 months from now, but also for creating a new trustee expense policy that provides better public accountability.
"(They) have served the board extremely well over the past year and accomplished a tremendous amount to restore integrity and confidence in the board's operations," Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said in a statement on Monday.
The Ministry of Education has since tasked Alway with establishing a new governance model to refocus the role of board trustees to support "increased achievement, increased accountability and transparency, good governance, financial sustainability and increased public confidence."
"Now the task that explicitly lies ahead is the renewal process toward good governance - to encourage all stakeholders toward a shift in culture to promote mutual respect," Alway said, noting he's been encouraged by the messages of goodwill he's received since word of his appointment broke on Monday.
Still, the task ahead of Alway is one parents, ratepayers and trustees all agree might prove arduous - especially given the fractious nature of the board of late.
Michael Baillargeon - the ratepayer whose conflict of interest charges caused Oliver Carroll's ouster - said he was encouraged by some of his peers' positive reviews of Alway, but admitted concern over the "rubble"-filled road that lies ahead of the board's new supervisor.
"I think Hartmann and Forma were both beaten up by this job; it took a lot more out of them than they expected. I don't think anyone could have come in and done a better job under the circumstances. Their task was magnified by the fact that the board was so completely dysfunctional," he said, estimating that the board's trustees are currently split into three or four different factions, all working against each other.
"The Minster talks of turning a page and leaving the past in the past. That's a very nice sentiment, but before you turn that page you need to read it."
York Trustee Rob Davis said he was shocked when the resignation announcement first came down, but has since made sense of the decision given events of late. Davis most recently butted heads with the recently departed supervision team over a proposed trustee-organized meeting with parents last week.
While intended by Davis and Scarborough/North York Trustee John Del Grande as the first step in an effort to create a formal mechanism for them and their colleagues to respond to their constituents' concerns, the meeting was nonetheless cancelled by the supervision team. Given that its proposed site was the TCDSB boardroom, the team cited a concern that "some stakeholders may be confused about the nature of the meeting...and the role of trustees," who, they noted, have no decision-making powers under supervision.
"In hindsight (the resignation) makes sense," Davis said. "The job of the supervisor was to get the board's financial house in order - and as much as Hartmann contributed to that end, it's universally understood that he might have overstepped his boundaries when he told (trustees) we couldn't meet...That action, I think, hastened the resignation."
But now that all is said and done, Davis said he's interested in "hitting the reset button" and making some changes - and he's not the only one.
Catholic parents, fatigued by a long year of difficult transitions, are anxious to move back towards a sense of normalcy - including having democratically-elected trustees as their voice - at the board level, said Murielle Boudreau, chair of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network.
"We've had a very turbulent year and a half. It's unprecedented what we've gone through...and now that the school year is starting again, with a new supervisor, hopefully everything will settle down," she said.
Which is just the goal Alway has in mind.
"My priority is to encourage some sense of calm and to do a lot of listening," he said.