Alberta public sector wages: 0% increase.

[mr2mike]

New teachers and EA/support.
Teachers over 5 yrs are well buried in the union. Can't touch them.

[rx7boi]

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Also I didn't mean to make it sound like I was saying teachers aren't people. They are for sure not some kind of master race of uncaring public sector automatons. I think @MalibuStacy would kick my ass if I insinuated something like that.

Challenge him to a rugby match....oh wait

[ExtraSlow]

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Challenge him to a rugby match....oh wait

Maybe wrestling? Oh wait....

[dirtsniffer]

Not sure if this is the right place but we have an escalation between the CBE and the province.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...sZvMdqvlDKp9o8

On Sunday evening, Calgary Board of Education trustees met in secret and then passed a motion without disclosing the subject.

By no coincidence, auditors for the province were arriving at the board Monday morning.

The secret motion required any elected trustee meeting with provincial auditors to have a CBE lawyer present, according to several sources.

On Monday morning, trustee Lisa Davis announced she’s quitting as the elected representative for Wards 6 and 7. She’ll give formal notice Tuesday.

She called the Sunday vote “the final straw in continued restrictions on my ability to fulfill my duties as a trustee.”

Davis was to meet with the auditors Monday.

In a Facebook post, she said, “Should I be asked to, I will continue to co-operate as completely as I can given the constraints that have been placed upon me.”

Having a CBE lawyer present is like a gag order for any trustee who has a problem with board performance, policy and governance.

The board’s legal arm has in the past threatened trustees for voicing criticism.

Remarkable as it seems, people elected by the voters can be sanctioned by bureaucrats for speaking independently.

By mid-morning Monday, the province was calling out the board for yet another effort to impose politburo-style unity in the face of any criticism or inquiry.

“It’s extremely troubling that Trustee Davis has felt the need to resign in the midst of an independent governance review,” said Colin Aitchison, press secretary to Education Minister Adriana LaGrange.

“Her indication that the CBE is constraining her and other trustees from completely co-operating with Grant Thornton’s independent financial and governance review is disturbing.

“It is the government’s expectation that the CBE will allow their trustees and administrators to fully co-operate with this review.”

The CBE, as you’d expect, expressed supreme confidence “that our current governance policies and procedures are fully compliant with legislation and strong governance practices.”

The secret Sunday-night sanction was opposed only by Davis and one other trustee, Althea Adams from Wards 3 and 4.

Davis has often been in trouble with the board for her efforts to make its debates and decisions more public. There’s also deep distrust because she was an unsuccessful candidate for a UCP nomination in 2018.

Whatever the internal politics — and they are extremely nasty — Davis is bang on about the board’s constant suppression of the simplest democratic principles.

This was going on long before the Kenney government came to office. Sheila Taylor, when she was a trustee, also faced threats of legal action.

It’s noteworthy that she too was a conservative who eventually ran for the old Wildrose Party. Also like Davis, she had a strong financial background and asked a lot of questions.

Elected bodies all over Alberta accommodate political differences every day. The CBE seems utterly incapable of tolerating the slightest ideological or political diversity.

Sunday’s meeting was another example of this kind of pressure — perhaps the most outrageous of all.

City councillors can bring forward any motion they like in public. At the CBE, motions designed to improve the system are often killed in secret meetings.

It is not clear that Davis, even after her resignation takes effect, will be able to speak freely without facing legal action.

The strictures on her right to disclose anything that’s happened in the past “are only the board’s to waive,” she said in one terse comment.

Some people might be upset that she’s leaving early. To that, she says on Facebook: “(I) regret I am now unable to fulfill the duties the public elected me to act upon and that I must resign.”

In 1999 the education minister of the day, Lyle Oberg, fired the entire board and appointed a provincial trustee, George Cornish, to run the organization. A byelection for new trustees was set for seven months afterward.

The reason, compared with today’s mess, was trivial; trustees weren’t getting along, to the point that the province deemed the board “dysfunctional.”

Today the CBE is courting the same fate. LaGrange has not ruled out the possibility of dismissing all trustees.

It might be the only way to answer the biggest question of all — what on earth is this school board so afraid of?

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.

[killramos]

Yea that screams of an organization with nothing to hide.

[Buster]

Wait, we can fire all of these useless dipshits?

Do it.

Cut my taxes. Stop doing education, government. thanks.

[kertejud2]

Seems so long ago Danielle Smith couldn’t run a CBE meeting but idiots thought she could run a province.

[dirtsniffer]

Do you know what happened with that board of trustees? From her wikipedia page she wasn't the chairperson but it's probably an interesting story.

[ExtraSlow]

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Yea that screams of an organization with nothing to hide.

You are a toxic capitalist who hates children. And puppies. I heard you hate puppies.

[A790]

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Yea that screams of an organization with nothing to hide.

It's interesting how organizations and people under investigation will resort to bullshit tactics like this to save their own skin. Of course curruption has something to hide, and it's clear that the CBE board is corrupt.

They're just trying to prevent you from learning the "what" behind the why.

[mr2mike]

I don't get how this can be actually possible to vote on hiding information?!
They know we pay their salaries, right?
Actually dislike them even more now.

[ExtraSlow]

All levels of elected government hide certain things from the voters. But it's a lot easier to understand why the federales might have a legitimate need to do that, vs the damned school board.

[JRSC00LUDE]

edit ... change of heart

[killramos]

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You are a toxic capitalist who hates children. And puppies. I heard you hate puppies.

Dang. You caught me

[kobe tai]

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I don't get how this can be actually possible to vote on hiding information?!
They know we pay their salaries, right?
Actually dislike them even more now.

at least they're voting lol. provincial government skips that step.

[kertejud2]

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Do you know what happened with that board of trustees? From her wikipedia page she wasn't the chairperson but it's probably an interesting story.

IIRC it was just adults behaving like children in the end. Smith spent most of her time trying close schools so that private companies could lease them instead (classic public paying capital costs for private profit move) and skipped votes while others eventually got caught passing notes mocking the clothes and hair of others and trying to think of people who could beat them in the next election. When it was clear they couldn’t get along and do anything the Minister of Education dismissed them and called a byelection (as much as we think city council bickers and behaves like children, they’re comparatively saintly; this trustee board was more like the current Rockyview County council). Couple of them went on to be MLAs.

Funny enough, Danielle Smith beat Bill Smith (former mayoral candidate) for her trustee seat which set off a string of him falling upward and eventually being PC party president.

[The Cosworth]

Yikes, CBE is a crap shoot hey.

[Buster]

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IIRC it was just adults behaving like children in the end. Smith spent most of her time trying close schools so that private companies could lease them instead (classic public paying capital costs for private profit move) and skipped votes while others eventually got caught passing notes mocking the clothes and hair of others and trying to think of people who could beat them in the next election. When it was clear they couldn’t get along and do anything the Minister of Education dismissed them and called a byelection (as much as we think city council bickers and behaves like children, they’re comparatively saintly; this trustee board was more like the current Rockyview County council). Couple of them went on to be MLAs.

Funny enough, Danielle Smith beat Bill Smith (former mayoral candidate) for her trustee seat which set off a string of him falling upward and eventually being PC party president.

Talented people dont go into politics. So you get what you get.

[dirtsniffer]

Doesn't sound unlike the current board, except that nois they'd probably sue Smith for stealing and releasing the petty notes about her.