Opinion: At the EMSB, fiscal responsibility is a must

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We, the four parent commissioners of the English Montreal School Board, play a unique role in school board governance. We hold seats on the EMSB Parents Committee and are also duly elected by the parents-committee members to represent the parents’ interests on the EMSB Council of Commissioners. We are the parents’ voice on council. While the parents committee is a consultative body providing advice to the board on matters of importance to parents, the parent commissioners play a direct role in providing oversight of the board.

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English-speaking Quebecers have a constitutional right to manage and control our school system. But this right is inconsequential unless talented women and men come forward and promote policies and programs designed to benefit our school community.

On Nov. 3, we will be going to the polls, and voters at the EMSB will have options to consider. Katherine Korakakis, the current head of the English Parents’ Committee Association of Quebec and outgoing chair of the EMSB Parents Committee, is taking on incumbent Joe Ortona and running for chair of the EMSB. They are each putting their teams together and will be running candidates in every district.

Having multiple candidates is good for democracy and our community, potentially leading to a spirited contest, a critical public policy debate and higher voter turnout.

We have concerns with Korakakis’s stance, as outlined in The Gazette (“English Parents’ Committee president Korakakis running to be EMSB chair,” July 3), regarding a motion that was put forth to provide each school in our board with an extra $15,000 for the purchase of supplies and funding of school programs. Korakakis criticizes the current board, of which we are members, for rejecting this approach on the grounds that schools already had sufficient funds.

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However, as Korakakis should know, every year parents are directly consulted and actively involved in informing board budget priorities through our parents committee and individual governing boards. The parents committee, made up of delegates elected from EMSB school communities, is mandated to consider the collective needs of schools across our network and make recommendations to the council of commissioners on the most pressing budget priorities. In their official response to the budget consultation, parents consistently call for an increase in staffing ratios across the system, with a particular focus on students with different learning needs. Typically, other priorities include investments in programs, services, infrastructure and new technologies that benefit the students.

In our experience, a request for discretionary funds has never been on the list. The EMSB network includes 73 schools and centres, and parents inherently understand that allocating more than $1 million to governing boards for them to spend at their discretion would reduce spending on other pressing global issues. This is in fact what happened for many years prior to 2019; schools were consistently unable to spend the discretionary funds allocated to them, which means students were deprived of services to which they were entitled.

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The role of the council of commissioners is to oversee that the budget is allocated in a fair, transparent and equitable manner. Diverting school operating funds to provide discretionary funds to governing boards, with no accountability, undermines the budget process, the consultation with parents and other stakeholders, and the best advice of the board’s financial experts. Moreover, allocating the same amount of discretionary funds to each school is far from equitable, because the needs of our schools are not equal across the board. Some schools have more than 1,000 students, while others have less than 200; some schools have a high number of special needs students, while others do not.

It is also important to put this in the context of the EMSB’s financial situation. As we continue to emerge from the pandemic and face enrolment shortfalls in our adult sector, we have a deficit and are relying on our accumulated surplus to balance our budget. As a result, fiscal prudence has to be our watchword for now if we are to avoid school closings and cutbacks while investing in our infrastructure and our programming.

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Another of Korakakis’s priorities as stated by The Gazette is to “increase the amount of mental health services available to students and bolster programs dedicated to special-needs and gifted students.” While these are worthy goals, she offers no concrete plans or strategies for achieving them. As parent commissioners, these have been priorities for us throughout our mandate, and we take pride in the progress that we have made. We have been the driving force behind the creation of the Quebec Virtual Academy, which serves students with medical conditions that prevent them from attending class in person, as well as elite athletes enrolled in Sport-études programs across the nine English school boards. Rosemount High School inaugurated its Arts-études program, the first of its kind among English high schools in Quebec, in February; and MIND High School, an alternative institution, began welcoming Secondary I and II students last school year.

We should also point out that during the Major School Change consultation in 2019-20, the parents committee recommended converting one of our buildings into a school dedicated to providing services to special needs students. We are now consulting on the creation of a centre of excellence for special needs students. If this initiative gets the green light, the facility will open its doors in 2026.

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While we welcome Korakakis’s candidacy and expect her team to put forward a comprehensive platform, we remain cautious. Her early campaign statements and proposals lack the depth needed to effectively manage and improve our school system. We look forward to a vigorous and civil debate on how we can best meet the needs of our students while being fiscally responsible.

In the coming weeks, we urge voters to scrutinize Korakakis’s proposals carefully and consider whether they truly reflect the needs and priorities of our community. The future of our schools depends on informed and prudent decision-making, not on populist promises that may jeopardize the financial stability of the EMSB. This financial stability over the last four years has allowed us to increase direct services and resources to the students in the classroom while launching important challenges to the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s controversial legislation, such as Bills 96, 21 and 40. Our financial stability has also allowed us to deliver the highest quality education, which has consistently been the best among public boards in Quebec, improving every year, and has recently surpassed the success rates in the private sector.

Maria Corsi, Tony Speranza and Daniel Tatone have been EMSB parent commissioners since 2020. Rosemarie Federico has been an EMSB parent commissioner since 2022.

Corsi is running in the school elections in Ward 4 with Team Joe Ortona. Federico, Speranza and Tatone are not candidates in the elections.

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