If I ever thought of becoming a politician a meeting last night with the Toronto District School Board cured me of that desire.
I had volunteered to help address boundary issues between the various primary schools in our local school district. Unlike the majority of Toronto, our area is increasing in student population. With the different development projects adding more and more families into the neighbourhoods, the schools are rapidly reaching capacity. The schools are also aging and have limited accessibility for children of special needs.
I had expected maps and numbers. Forgive my naivety. I guess I've been self-employed for too many years.
What I walked into was a meeting about having a meeting. We started off with introductions and a bit a background of why the committee was formed. I was fine with that. But then we spent twenty minutes about meeting rules. DUH! Does common courtesy really have to be written down? Perhaps it does for some, but once it is do we need to talk about it for another 19 minutes. Then take a 10 minute break.
So now we are one hour into the meeting and we haven't really discussed anything pertaining to school boundaries. We then watch a 10 minute video about change. Cute. Not entirely accurate but the point was to jump start some discussion. So we spent another 15 minutes discussing the film and what it means for our schools. Change happens. I knew that. Now what.
So now we discuss within our groups issues affecting our schools and possible ways of addressing this, one person taking notes. Then we told the group what we talked about with another person taking notes. And guess what. 90% was the same for every school. So notes were taken twice saying exactly the same thing.
And that was the end of the meeting. Except for another ten minutes taking about who we could tell about the content of the meeting and when the next 4 meetings would take place.
Sorry. I sort of lost it at that point. I mean we did nothing. Or rather nothing new. The issues had already been identified in a previous meeting. And frankly they were so obvious my grade 7 student could have listed them without prompting.
Speaking carefully, trying to follow the meeting rules, I spoke up. What is the time line here? Where is the end? When do we go from here? Did they really consider this meeting a success? I like to use a metre stick to measure forward movement not a micrometer.
Two to three years. TWO to THREE years. And this for the most minor of the suggestions. The bigger stuff i.e. stuff that requires money, most likely more. If seems if change really is necessary, we progress from these meetings to ARC meetings which are mandated by provincial legislation. Geesh. By the time any changes are made my kids will be out of the system.
And then we have the High Schools to deal with. Welcome to bureaucracy.
