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I respectfully take issue with Saskatchewan School Boards Association president Jaimie Smith-Windsor’s view that Saskatchewan teachers should negotiate classroom size and complexity with local school boards rather than incorporated the teachers’ issues into the provincial collective agreement.
Most school boards are run by knowledgeable, compassionate and committed members who truly value education, students and teachers. But, at their worst, boards can be run by people whose reasons for board membership are questionable, self-serving ones.
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The reality is, some run for school boards because: they have a grudge against teachers; see it as a political stepping stone to provincial or federal politics; like the sense of power and self-importance; or value the stipend. Most boards aren’t black and white. Many are problematic.
Classroom size and complexity incorporated into the collective agreement would help prevent the incompetence and willful blindness. Incompetence and willful blindness in boards, governments and employers are destructive to everyone.
Unfortunately, it seems these characteristics are becoming all too common.
Teaching for a good board is a joy because there is a positive and supportive atmosphere. Teaching for a poor, even toxic, board destroys morale when teachers are undervalued — especially when toxicity seeps into central offices, school-based administration and classrooms.
As a retired teacher I know, having served under both types of boards. I also served on a school board.
Meg Shatilla, Spruce Home
Partisan SHRC appointments shameful
Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government has no shame. When the former Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission members expressed reservations with Moe’s gender pronoun adventure, the expiration of their term limits could not have come soon enough.
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We now know at least some of the newly appointed board members were chosen for their political credentials rather than their expertise in human rights.
Although Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre has never practised law, she should know appointing her constituency official to the SHRC board flirts with conflict of interest. Appointing someone who is running for a Saskatchewan Party nomination in the upcoming election is equally brazen.
The road to electoral disaster is paved with this kind of arrogance. Those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes and, presumably, suffer the same consequences.
Roy Schneider, Regina
Riders should have listened to mom
Memo to the promotional people with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, City of Regina or anyone else: My dear mother departed this world several decades ago, but like many dearly departed mothers, she actually seems to get a little wiser by the day.
One of the simplest but wisest lessons she left was: “If you are planning to do something that may be fine with some but possibly offensive to others, find another way.” Any arguments?
Jim Gallagher, Regina
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