MARK-ALAN WHITTLE
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SCHOOL BOARD CUT ITS OWN THROAT

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The Toronto Sunday Sun
RE "SCHOOL board cut its own throat" (Lorrie Goldstein, Dec. 29): After reading about the ill-conceived actions of the Toronto District School Board trustees, I'm left with a strange sense of deja vu provided by the suspended trustees here in Hamilton. In everything they say and do, trustees for the Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton-Wentworth District School Boards have demonstrated a parochial, reactionary, political focus rather than a commitment to renewal in the classrooms. To resist renewal as the Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa trustees have done, is indicative of the master-servant relationship foisted upon the directors of education and their senior management team, who have been bullied and brow-beaten by the suspended trustees for so long, they have given up trying to make their education systems work more effectively for students. The government-appointed supervisors have empowered each board's senior management team to embrace an education agenda for renewal, to find their collective backbones and to learn how to foster a partnership with the trustees rather than giving in to the master-servant relationship and social agenda foisted upon them by the trustees.
(In other words, they were asking to be taken over, and the Tories complied)