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Who Controls the School Boards?
The City of Toronto kindly provides voters with financial information on the campaigns of its candidates for public office, including the names of those who financed their campaigns. A search of the data on the school board candidates proves quite rewarding. Of the 22 successful candidates for the Toronto public school board in 2006, 15 received donations from the teachers’ unions and/or the union-linked Campaign for Public Education (at one time, the CPE even had its offices in the Local 12 high school teachers’ union offices). Irene Atkinson, one-time chair of the board and current chair of the board’s budget committee, had 81% of her campaign costs covered by the unions/CPE. It’s the same story over at the Catholic school board.
And it’s not surprising that so many union-backed candidates manage to get elected. After all, the teachers’ unions go on to endorse these candidates and encourage their members to vote for them. In some cases, the local union provides volunteers to help with the campaigns of their preferred candidates, arranges for helpful questions to be asked at all-candidates meetings, gives free legal advice, and so forth. With the voter turn-out so low for school board elections, the union contribution can make the crucial difference.
So why does it matter that so many school board trustees are beholden to the teachers’ unions? Well, for starters, school board trustees sit on the management side of the table at collective agreement bargaining sessions and, to some extent, this often means that the unions have representatives on both sides of the table - going a long way towards explaining the generous provisions in teachers’ contracts. Then there are all the other union-friendly policies school boards can adopt - like lots of time off for union reps, frequent “curriculum days” and other student-free times, seniority provisions, and protection for bad teachers.
Given the teachers’ unions’ huge (and guaranteed) revenues, the pittance they spend on school board elections is money well spent. In their opinion anyway.