Powers of anglophone school councils curtailed under proposed reforms

The Higgs government is reforming how district education councils govern the province's schools, including a potentially thorny change that will see different models for the English and French systems.

In the four anglophone school districts, elected councils will lose their decision-making authority over budgets and over superintendents, and will now only play an "advisory and accountability" role.

In the three francophone districts, the councils will keep those powers. 

That's because under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, minority-language communities in each province have the right to self-govern their own education systems.

Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Bill Hogan said that left the province with "no choice" but to create an asymmetrical model in the two systems. 

"There is a difference because there are Charter rights on the francophone side as a minority community in our province, and we're not going to mess around with Charter rights," he said.

"We respect those and that's why this new Education Act reflects that. … I don't have any problem with it, either."

Hogan introduced the changes to the act in the legislature Tuesday afternoon. 

He acknowledged to reporters that some anglophone New Brunswickers may resent having elected educational councils with less clout over their schools than their francophone counterparts. 

"Not all of English New Brunswick understand the Charter rights that are afforded to the minority in our province," Hogan said.

"There's going to be perhaps some education that needs to take place as to why there's that difference between the two systems." 

In the new anglophone model, superintendents — the senior administrative role in each district — will now report directly to the deputy minister and minister of education.

Hogan said that was to get more consistency in how provincial policies are applied in schools across the province.

He said, for example, that the policy on classroom inclusion "has been and continues to be applied differently across our province. I'm not saying it's the superintendents' fault, but somewhere the wires were crossed."