Thirty former Manitoba school superintendents - including ex-leaders of the Flin Flon School Division (FFSD) and Frontier School Division - have signed a letter calling on the province to pull back Bill 64.
“We, the undersigned, call on the Government of Manitoba to reconsider its intention to pursue the passage of Bill 64,” reads the letter, published online May 4.
The letter is cosigned by 30 former school division superintendents, including former Flin Flon School Division superintendent Dan Reagan. Several former Frontier School Division superintendents and area superintendents also signed off on the letter, including Karen Crozier, Ray Derksen, Arnold Dysart, Cathy Fidierchuk, Cam Giavedoni, Strini Reddy, Winston Smith, Jerry Storie and David Yeo.
The Frontier group brings with it a series of people who have received further honours - Storie served as the MLA for Flin Flon from 1981-95, was a provincial cabinet minister from 1982-88 and is a former dean of education at Brandon University, while Reddy was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2017.
In the letter, the superintendents say the provincial bill is based on a series of faulty assumptions and that the bill, if passed, would cause harm to Manitoba’s education system.
“Among other inaccurate contentions, Bill 64 is based on false and divisive premises and promises – of quality (test scores vs poverty); participation (individual parents vs school boards); collegiality and professionalism (principals vs teachers); and, efficiency (extreme centralization vs local discretion). Nowhere in the world have the solutions being advocated ended in the results being proclaimed,” reads the letter.
“And everywhere in the world, extreme centralization has led to standard formula-driven prescriptions – one size-fits-all answers – insensitive to local differences and impervious to local input. And nowhere in the world have they increased trust in government.”
