Morinville: Historically Catholic, but not so Catholic any more. Below: Dave Hancock before he bought new spectacles.The great minds who run education in Alberta have reached a compromise they hope will make the bubbling issue of the complete lack of secular public education in the Edmonton dormitory town of Morinville go away, or at least simmer down for a while.
The solution doesn’t really make sense, and in the end it will probably make taxpayers just as angry as they already are, or maybe angrier, but it counts as progress of a sort. At least, starting next September, Morinville parents who aren’t Roman Catholics will have the opportunity to send their children to a secular public school in their own community.
Now, this is being billed as a local solution cooked up by two local school boards, but you can count on it that it wouldn’t have happened without a lot of arm-twisting and probably a promise or two from Alberta Education.
Whoever came up with the brainstorm, it was necessary to twist commonsense policies into pretzels to achieve its principal goal without lighting a fire under well-organized supporters of the community’s Catholic education system, which because of a constitutional and political anomaly is able to masquerade as a “public school board.”
So what do you do when the “public school board” in a diverse and growing Canadian community of 8,000 souls (as it were) offers only parochial Roman Catholic education and, worse, the “public” board, which to complicate matters is located in another town, tells parents who want secular public education for their kids to drop dead? That’s exactly what happened earlier this year when the board voted unanimously that there would be no secular education offered in Morinville.
But since many Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others in Morinville, not to mention the non-religious – who together make up more than half the historically Catholic town’s population – did not appreciate their children being proselytized with this particular brand of Christianity at school, something had to give.
When secular parents spoke up about it, though, the Education Department and the Conservative government – both terrified by the idea of well-organized and angry supporters of Catholic education getting anywhere near a polling booth – at first tried to ignore them, then suggested they bus their kids out of town, then tried to brush them off. Education Minister Dave Hancock, a tower of moral courage in this matter, suggested that if parents wanted secular education, they should take it to the courts. Morinville Town Council also ducked the issue.
The secular parents kept pushing, however, and after saying no, the Catholic school board hired a public opinion researcher to see if there was demand for secular education – presumably hoping there wasn’t – and discovered there was plenty.
And after that, someone came up with the weird solution of having another public school board provide the public education in Morinville.
Bear with us now, because this is complicated. The Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division (that is, the so-called public school board which is actually the parochial Catholic school board, based 16 kilometres away in another Edmonton bedroom suburb that used to be dominated by Catholics but isn’t any more … still with us?) will now pay the Sturgeon School Division, which offers public education in Sturgeon County, which surrounds Morinville, to provide public education to students in that town.
But parents whose children go to the new Morinville secular public school run by the county school division won’t get to pay their taxes to their kids’ schools, at least not directly, or to vote for their own school trustees.
Nope, seeing as this is a contractual arrangement, they’ll still have to vote for a trustee to sit on the Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division, who is unlikely to be engaged by their issues.
So, while they’re feeling some relief now, this group of parents – which is bound to grow as Morinville’s population increases – won’t be happy for long.
Neither, of course, will Roman Catholic parents in Morinville when the penny drops that a goodly sum of the tax money they pay into their school system will now have to be forked over to another school board run secular schools. Stand by for a tax increase, folks.
And, count on it, someone is going to feel shortchanged if they conclude their kids are being educated in inferior facilities – and according to the local press, the secular school will likely be located in trailers (whoops, “modular buildings”) and high school students will still be bused out of town.
Moreover, when funding runs short for education – as, erm, it seems to be doing right now all over Alberta – both groups are bound to feel shortchanged, especially if the local school board decides that it’s one of its schools not infused with Catholicity that's got to go.
What’s more, this says nothing about what public school taxpayers in Sturgeon County will think or say when they conclude that the St. Albert Catholic school board isn’t paying enough for its secular schools in Morinville and it’s having an impact on the funds available for their kids’ educations.
Then there are all the parents in those other under-funded Alberta jurisdictions when they do the math about how much this is all going to cost to preserve an irrational situation in one town.
No, in the end, this complicated deal isn’t going to make anyone happy, and it’s certainly not going to solve the myriad problems created by allowing parochial “public” school systems to exist in a modern secular society, no matter how understandable is the history that led to this situation.
However, it will likely buy the Conservative provincial government enough time to get a new leader in place and another general election out of the way before the issue heats up again. Which, presumably, was the point of the whole thing.
This post also appears on rabble.ca.
4 comments:
Parents have no say in where the money they pay via their property tax goes - secular public or Catholic - despite the choice made(showing on their tax notice). The latter only deals with which slate of trustees you can vote for - Public or Private. I doubt that many parents realize that the education money paid via property taxes simply goes is into general revenue. The government decides who gets what money on a per pupil basis (or whatever criterion they choose, most likely). The private/charter/whatever schools once paid their own way. Now they are getting 70% gov't funding and screaming for more.
Times change, people change - get rid of these antiquated "musts according to Charter/Constitution" and infuse some common sense.
David, this is a good post -- but not perfect. I think you misunderstand the essence of the issue, when you comment "the community's Catholic education system, (which) becacause of a constitutional and political anomoly, is able to masquerade as a 'public school board'.
Actually, the reverse is correct. The community's public school system, because of an historic anomoly, is able to masquerade as a 'Catholic [separate] school board.
Nothing in the Constitution guarantees that Catholics will have 'Catholic' (separate or public) school education everywhere. GSACRD is a public school jurisdiction, notwithstanding the word 'Catholic' in the name. That word is merely an homage to history. There is nothing in the Constitution or in the School Act that recognizes or gives any special treatment to a denominational public school jurisdiction. Edmonton Public is not a Protestant public school district even though that is how it started life 125 years ago.
It appears that Catholics in Morinville are now the minority faith (compared to Protestants). If Catholics in Morinville want a Catholic permeated education, they should create a Catholic Separate School District in the Town. If they don't address this isssue they may find others creating a Protestant Separate School District. The creation of a Protestant S.S.D. will not end the need to have GSACRD provide a secular education, but it will mean the Catholic community would be without the entitlement it wants.
A comment about the word 'parochial', as well. Parochial means "owned by a church". Separate schools throughout Alberta are not parochial institutions -- although there is often an effort to suggest they are. They are civil institutions whose elector shares a common faith. Separate schools are not created by a Church (they are created by electors who share a common faith); they are not regulated or funded by a Church, they are not owned by a Church, and the Board of Trustees is not appointed by a Church and is not accountable to a Church.
As you properly note, this is not the end. It is only the end of the beginning.
I expect that, this fall the issue will come to St. Albert itself. In the City of St. Albert everyone who is not Protestant is legally an elector of the GSACRD. People living in St. Albert who are not of (practicing) the Protestant faith have just as much right to a secular education provided by GSACRD as do the parents in Morinville. Which public school board will GSACRD welcome to St. Albert to respond to that demand.
I attended Morinville junior and senior high school in the early-mid 90s, when the Morinville and Legal school districts merged into the GSACRD. Immediately after the merger, most of the religious content was actually removed (no more morning prayer being the change that sticks most in my mind). You still had to opt out of Religion class, and convocation was held at the Roman Catholic church (until we outgrew it), but that was about the limit. The district seemed to understand that as the only school in town, they had to accommodate those who were not Catholic.
I've long-since graduated, but it's disappointing to hear that they've slid so far into the past. Perhaps enough Morinville parents will join in the switch to convince the board that they need to be a school for the entire community.
GSACRD offers alternative programs, which are basically a framework for providing alternate course material and educational context. This framework would be, it seems to me, ideal for offering a secular program for kids. But they've explicitly refused to attempt this solution.
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