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FRIVOLOUS LAW SUIT TOOK MONEY FROM SCHOOLS
Dundas Star News, September 25th, 2003
If Lynden resident and community activist Cathy Bryden and her side-kick Robert Tziougras were really serious about keeping Lynden School open, they should have invested the $10,000 raised in the community as a down payment on a mortgage to buy a school, instead of wasting it on a frivolous and costly court challenge that may require restitution to be paid to the Board.
The law suit has been costly to the proponents and to the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board, which incurred extraordinary legal costs, that take funding directly out of the classroom. Perhaps suspended Trustee Reg Woodworth, who filed a supportive affidavit with the court, will donate his $5,000 board salary as atonement. The record of the board provides this conclusively, and Hon. Thomas R. Lofchik, of Superior Court has agreed the suspended trustees failed in this regard. Under provisions of the Education Act, Lynden School would, if incorporated, receive the exact same per-pupil funding the Hamilton-Wentworth District School board would receive to deliver the core education services mandated by the province.
As directors of their own school board, Cathy Bryden and Robert Tziougras would be free to hire whomever they wish to teach their children in class, as long as they are licensed in Ontario to do so.
They could even pick up the tab for the mandatory police background check as an incentive to attract candidates and personally verify each staff's credentials to ensure they pass the muster of the board.
Imagine being able to pick and choose from the cream of the crop of a multi-disciplined teaching profession or being able to fire incompetent teaching staff who fail to meet the minimum standards set by school directors.
No nasty and contentious labour disruptions to deal with on a regular basis, nor skyrocketing salaries for education staff and administration when education unions coordinate their disruptions for maximum monetary effect.
But the real ace in the hole for future education directors Bryden and Tziougras would be not having small- minded trustees micro-managing the affairs of the board in a bubble of self- interest, as if the whole educational universe orbits around them, to the exclusion of all others.
-- Mark-Alan Whittle, Hamilton.