Liberal upcoming consultation on education changes falls short

Not all SAC chairs allowed to attend meeting with Minister Churchill

HALIFAX – The NDP Caucus has learned a consultation meeting with Education Minister Zach Churchill is being limited to a random selection of School Advisory Council (SAC) chairs, even though all SAC chairs in the Halifax Regional School Board were invited.

The Halifax Regional School Board is hosting a meeting Tuesday, February 13, with Superintendent Elwin LeRoux and Education Minister Zach Churchill. While all SAC chairs were invited, they were later told that due to the high volume of responses, only randomly-selected council chairs would be permitted to attend.

“School Advisory Committees will be the only local voices left if we eliminate school boards, so why wouldn’t the Liberals make sure all 134 school councils are represented at this meeting?” said Claudia Chender, NDP Spokesperson for Education and Early Childhood Development. “The Liberal government failed to ensure Nova Scotians were consulted properly to create the Glaze report and now they aren’t consulting properly to implement its recommendations.”

The Liberals have said they will make changes to the Education Act in the upcoming spring session of the legislature. They plan to eliminate all seven English School Boards before the start of the 2018/2019 school year.

“The government is proposing major changes to our school system and I want to hear directly from the Minister how these changes will be implemented and what they mean for our school,” said Jennifer Huber, chair of the School Advisory Council at Hawthorn Elementary in Dartmouth. “I would have expected accommodations be made to meet demand, instead of giving some councils better access to information than others.”

• 30 -