Two GTA schools report mild cases of swine flu
680News staff Toronto 2009-05-08 10:26
Toronto - Two cases of swine flu were reported at two schools in the GTA, one in Toronto and one in Peel.
In the first case, the Toronto District Catholic School Board did not say whether the infected person at St. Anthony Elementary School, in the Bloor and Dufferin streets area, is a student or a staff member. The case has been described as mild.
A spokesperson at the board told 680News the school is open and parents have remained calm. "I believe parents are appreciative of the information that they receive. If they realize there's going to be more and more cases of H1N1 throughout Toronto, and in fact throughout Canada, you can see the numbers going up," he said.
On Thursday, a Grade 12 student at Archbishop Romero Secondary School in the city's west-end had the virus, but was cleared to return to school.
Custodians within the Catholic school system have stepped up their cleaning efforts ever since the outbreak began.
In the second case, Peel Public Health reported that a student at Woodlands School in Mississauga has been diagnosed with the swine flu virus.
The student experienced mild symptoms and is recovering at home.
The school will remain open, and all events and activities will be held as usual.
A letter and a question and answer sheet was sent home to all parents of students at the school on Thursday
| Wynne tries to stem losses
Issues pile on education minister's plate, including Nanny-gate, contracts, trustee wrongdoing
By MOIRA MACDONALD
Last Updated: 11th May 2009, 5:13am
The provincial education file can be hot at the best of times, never mind other controversies that may spin out of control.
Witness last week as Ontario's Education Minister Kathleen Wynne did her best to dodge the political bullet posed by the Ruby Dhalla nanny affair.
Labour minister Peter Fonseca was the main guy in the hot seat -- criticized for doing nothing after hearing allegations of exploitation by former nannies in federal MP Dhalla's family's employ.
But Wynne was also in the room at the time of the allegations, at a forum for foreign nannies held at her constituency office.
But, thanks to the always busy education file, there were other things for Wynne to concern herself with.
There was the surfacing of a ministry of education memo to the Toronto Catholic board from just prior to the 2007 election, warning trustees their approval of benefits packages for themselves was against the rules -- yet it took many more months before the province went in and did trustees' housecleaning for them.
The same day, Wynne introduced a series of proposed changes to the roles and responsibilities of school boards.
Bill 177 notably formally recognizes that a school board's primary responsibility is for student achievement. It also spells out trustee duties, including that trustees must not meddle in day to day board management. They would also have to support implementation of board decisions, whether they were in favour of them or not.
CODE OF CONDUCT
Still to come are standards for a trustee code of conduct and regulations on the province's right to intervene in school boards that do not meet responsibilities on student achievement -- which could prove contentious.
But how far trustee conflicts of interest go remains a question begging an answer.
As reported last week, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association has a legal opinion stating if a trustee has a parent, spouse or child working for a school board, that trustee may have a conflict on all board budget matters and should not participate in discussions about them or vote on them.
That's huge. It's also profoundly impractical and means voters in the next municipal elections in late 2010 should ask trustee candidates if they have family working for the school boards they hope to serve. Voters should know if their potential trustee may not be able to represent their concerns on board money matters.
Then there's the yawning issue of a never-ending delay to the conclusion of the last unresolved teacher contract dispute in Ontario -- right here in Toronto's public school board, with its high school teachers.
More than three months after the teachers took the board to Ontario's Labour Relations Board on a bad-faith bargaining complaint, the complaint has still not been resolved and no hearings have been held.
Some trustees are asking what gives and questioning how independent the OLRB really is.
"It's beyond bizarre," said John Campbell, the TDSB's chairman. "I don't know if any pressure has been brought to bear, but let's just say it's highly unusual."
But Ken Coran, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, says the delay "is not unusual. These things are very slow-moving generally."
My calls to the OLRB were not returned. Wynne, meantime, has put a lucrative provincial teacher salary offer on hold for the Toronto board and teachers, pending the outcome.
Coran's Toronto union president, Doug Jolliffe, wrote members two weeks ago that a decision is unlikely until at least July. But, he warned, if the school board does not reach an agreement with the union (presuming the labour board agrees with the union's complaint) and the provincial deal is also withdrawn "then there will be a fight, beginning as early as September."
Just the sort of talk we like to hear, eh?
Unions rattling the strike placards in anticipation of the day after the Labour Day march -- perfect for breaking in the walking shoes.
MOIRA.MACDONALD@SUNMEDIA.CA
| Putting trust back in 'trustee'
Effort to restore public confidence in school board administration doesn't go far enough
By MOIRA MACDONALD
Last Updated: 6th May 2009, 6:02am
We say we want better public school boards -- boards we can trust -- but recent events leave me wondering if we'll ever get there.
Last Wednesday there was the spectacle of a Toronto Catholic school boardroom in uproar when provincial supervisor Norbert Hartmann refused to allow Toronto city councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong to speak on a potential school closure in his ward, which was on the meeting's agenda.
Hartmann recessed the meeting so everyone could cool off. Hartmann told me allowing Minnan-Wong to speak could have compromised a provincially-mandated closure process.
Some, including Minnan-Wong disagreed, questioning why put the item on the agenda in the first place if people couldn't speak to it. Ordinarily it might be just a one-off, freak event. But taken against the backdrop of chronic dysfunctionality at this board, it just served to reinforce the board's unfortunate new reputation for never being able get it together.
However, two days later news broke that Toronto Catholic trustees had submitted a report to Hartmann apologizing for past instances of misconduct and setting out directions for how to make up for it. Interestingly enough, the first topic mentioned is rebuilding relationships and public trust.
Meanwhile, a report was recently released at Queen's Park called School Board Governance -- A Focus on Achievement, which is supposed to give Education Minister Kathleen Wynne guidance on legislative changes coming up this month to strengthen school boards and our confidence in them.
PARENTS UNAWARE
The report was written by a government hand-picked panel of -- wait for it -- current and former trustees and school board directors.
Feeling confident? Sure the panel held consultations -- although parents I spoke to were often unaware of the short timelines for giving input -- but school board officials outnumbered parents by more than two to one.
The report did have useful things to say, such as legislation should spell out that a board's mandate is to promote student achievement. However it also recommends boards should promote student well-being -- potential carte blanche for trustees more worried about how kids' feel than how they do academically.
The report says boards should publish multi-year strategic plans on goals for student achievement, with annual public progress reports, and that the province should create a minimum standard for trustee codes of conduct.
Also, a sign of more provincial involvement at school boards to come, the report recommends the province have clearly-defined powers to intervene at a school board -- including putting it under supervision -- if it does not show adequate student progress.
One of the big disappointments is trustee conflict of interest is barely mentioned and doesn't make it into the final recommendations. An education ministry spokeswoman told me that's because conflict of interest legislation falls under the ministry for municipal affairs and housing.
That might make sense to government, but doesn't cut ice with the public. Since last year this paper has documented the story of how private citizen Mike Baillargeon was forced to independently take former Toronto Catholic trustee Oliver Carroll to court over conflict of interest violations, which Baillargeon ultimately won.
Essentially the province has left it to private citizens to enforce the province's rules on something that strikes at the heart of public confidence in local government.
That's wrong. And trustees say they're now worried about how far a potential conflict can go.
All the report suggests is boards might want to do some professional development on it. That's not enough.
The report also disappoints on its recommendation that enforcement of trustee codes of conduct should be left up to trustees themselves. If they want, they can use a neutral third party to investigate.
That's as satisfying as the governing party at Queen's Park choosing sanctions against its own members. It won't work and will only hurt public confidence, not enhance it.
Of course if the government really wanted to know what the rest of us thought, we could have told them that.
MOIRA.MACDONALD@SUNMEDIA.CA
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