A Bolt from the Blue

Breaking news! The Ontario government has just clarified that school boards’ top priority is now student achievement. School for Thought imagines the following conversations taking place in school boards as we speak.

• Bureaucrat #1:  My word! And all along I thought our priority was to create jobs and alleviate unemployment in the community! I guess now we’ll have to fire hundreds of our useless consultants, co-ordinators, superintendents, and other worthless hangers-on and spend the money on good teaching materials and training instead.
• Bureaucrat #2:  Fancy that! I was under the impression that we were supposed to be providing an incubator for trustees who have ambitions to move into provincial or federal politics. I wonder if we should start putting meaty topics - like test scores or graduation rates - on the trustees’ agendas. 
• Bureaucrat #3:  Holy smokes! All this time I have been thinking that our most important job was to keep the schools open every day because parents are relying on us to babysit their kids, and that that’s the reason we’ve been leaning over backwards to keep the peace with the teachers’ unions. Maybe we should stop giving them virtually everything they ask for, since many of the provisions in teachers’ contracts - for example seniority and tenure - are bad for kids.
• Bureaucrat #4:  Amazing! My impression was that our top priority was to give each other a comfortable existence, with stellar salaries, interesting travel opportunities, relaxed hours, generous pensions, and early retirement, Does this mean we should start paying ourselves less and working harder? Perish the thought!

School for Thought is very grateful to the Ontario government for helping these school board bureaucrats see the light. No doubt we will be seeing important changes shortly.

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