School Site Selection Public Consultation - Question Period
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development.
When this government eliminated local, democratically-elected school boards, they also eliminated public input in the school site selection process. Siting of a school used to be guided by a board-level selection committee that included SAC members, school board members, the African Nova Scotian representative, the Mi'kmaq representative, and members of municipal council.
The revised Education Act regulations that came into effect last year eliminated any requirement for community involvement in consultation. The site selection process is now entirely an internal government process - and we know how those go.
Mr. Speaker, does the minister think it's appropriate that this government has eliminated all public accountability and transparency in decision making about school site selection?
HON. ZACH CHURCHILL « » : In fact, Mr. Speaker, that's not true. We changed the governance model of education because we had three independent reports identifying the fact that that governance model was contributing to there being a variance in the achievement level of students. We made those changes for students.
The member speaks of that system as a epitome of democratic achievement. We have only 3 per cent of our population voting in those elections; close to 70 per cent of our school board members were acclaimed. This wasn't a process that the public was thoroughly engaged in, Mr. Speaker, so we do have to make our decisions based on the needs of our students and that is exactly what we're doing.
When it comes to site selection, Mr. Speaker, we are changing that process because the last site selection process contributed to delays up to three years for building our schools. We want to make sure we get our schools built on time.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, with respect, I'm not talking about school boards, I'm talking about site selection. The three-year number that the minister keeps trotting out is a red herring. Maybe once or twice, in general, the average time of actually consulting the public - which I know this government has a hard time doing - was closer to six months.
Schools are an important part of any community, Mr. Speaker. The decision of where to build a new school should include community voices. I can't believe this is an issue. Consultation should be a given.
The Musquodoboit Harbour and Area Chamber of Commerce has been trying to engage in this process for almost a year, notwithstanding the comment that it is coming. They are extremely frustrated with the lack of communication - and I'll table that from the department. In July they wrote to the minister to ask, first, that the new school be built in the centre of the community and, second, that the minister provide a defined, transparent and collaborative process for them to follow, and they have gotten no response.
Will the minister please table the plan for public engagement, not talk more about school boards, in the site selection process?
ZACH CHURCHILL: The member mentioned elected school boards in the preface of her question. I thought that was an important item to address.
When it comes to site selection, the reason why we did have delays of between six months and three years, on average, was because we did not do a technical evaluation first of sites. We are moving from a process where the community selects a number of sites to be evaluated to a process where we do the technical evaluation first beginning with the current site of the school. Once the technical evaluation is done, if the building can actually be serviced, we then go to the community and ask for input. We do that through the municipality, through public consultation, through dealing with the SAC, and in the case of the CSAP, the school board.
We are streamlining a process to create an efficiency to get rid of delays, hopefully, in the system. That process will continually involve the public.