Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1975-10-08, Page 13g to this will ious TP !6 15 35 24 tson the TP 17 7 5 3 ster rris the tie in UM. and trice sh- all, yed ure we am. e ask -the administrators What's going on in our schools ? People in our area are somewhat baffled by what's happening in education, Since the schools were centralized under county board's of education a few years ago parents and other taxpayers have felt increasingly out of touch with what is going on in them, Ten years ago the people on the school board were the people across the street, down the concession or perhaps yourself. The teachers also lived in the community and you knew them personally, whether or not you had children at school. Things were smaller then 'Each board had only one school to run and parents could see a direct relation between their tax dollar and improvements at their child's school. But most of that is gone now. What most people know about the schools are that millions of dollars are spent, that administrators and teachers make more money than they do and what they read in the newspaper, mostly about new programs, construction and transportation. If they have children in the schools, they hear more about 'what is going on. But that is often confusing. Parents brought up on the three 'r's may have trouble making sense out of talk of new math, open classrooms, options and courses called "Man in Society". It appears as if there's been a revolution in education and that those who aren't directly involved have gotten little information about what the changes are and what they are designed to ?accomplish. Education gets a lot of criticism in Huron County, perhaps because people feel they have little control over what is going on. In an attempt to get more intormation about our education systems than what can come across in a news report from a school board meeting, the Post interviewed the two Directors of Education who operate in this county. We talked to them about their jobs, their ideas about where parents, trustees, teachers and administrators fit into the system and their explanations about what's been happening in education. Communication is a problem, Huron director agrees John Cochrane, Director Huron Board of Education 1: ' MAIT-SIDE ORCHARDS. BRUSSELS Pick your own Spy or , Delicious this 'weekend and all next week. Apples picked to choose front are- Macs, Delicious, Cortland, St. Lawrence, Wolf River, Snows and T . Sweets. 75 lb. bags, Shelburne #1 Potatoes, Honey, Grapes, Cider, Presh Apple Butter, and other items. ept, iblic r at Joys The ided r the 'ike s to but rig, ane and ire, ton ion John Cochrane, 51, director of the Huron County Board of Education is one of the few people around who will argue that amalgamation of the schools rider county boards of education has actually cut down on • expensive duplication. Before the county board, there were three elementary and one secondary inspectors in Huron working for the provincial Ministry of Education. Now Mr. Cochrane points out, the Huron County Board only has four superintendents of education who have taken on the inspecting role. These superintendents in 1976 each will earn from $32,19 to $37,792, depending on their experience. They are responsible for about eight schools each. Then too, before the county board Mr. Cochrane says , all of the county's high schools except Seaforth had a business administrator who did all the accounting for his school. Now of course, business matters for the board's 31 schools are all done from the board's Clinton office. John Cochrane admits that bigness isn't always better and that people do feel alienated and out of touch with their schools since they were amalgamated. "It's a problem, but I don't know what the answers are", he says. He says he's thought about a public relations program, but that costs money and may be seen as just window dressing. "We try to encourage principals to keep parents informed" about what's going on in individual schools, he says: But in general the Huron County Board of. Education has been quiet, some might say secretive, about it's activities. Amid charges that the board is run like a closed corporation, with the administration making most policy decisions and many trustees not too involved in 'the big picture', the past response of the Huron board and its director of education has been to retreat further into silence. Mr. Cochrane said that perhaps the board has been too defensive in The past and has failed to let the public know about its successes. Consequently, only the controversial things, like salary increases, hit the papers. Reaction from the public is bad and Mr.' Cochrane's adinin•istr • ation clams tip further. Rut there is good news from the Huron Board, of Education too. John Cochrane positively glows as he tells about the success Huron has had in including aientally retarded kids in the Ngular school system, "We set out in 1969-70 to integrate retarded -children, Why should we put a mark on their foreheads?" At least time, he says the' Ministry of Education was saying 41'10, to it tati ii be done," Now getting retarded kids classes 'nth the regular schopls is ministry policy, "the in thing", John Cochrane says. But the Huron board pioneered the effort on their own. The school facilities for retarded children in Huron are good and he'd "stack them against any I've seen." Retarded children whose classrooms are in regular schools are able to use the gym, home. ec and industrial arts equipment. When one school in the county has fire drills, each grade eight student has a retarded child as a buddy and accompanies that child out of the school. Blowing our horn "Perhaps we've been too hesitant about blowing our own horn", John Cochrane says, when the interviewer comments that probably very few people know 'anything about what their schools are doing for retarded kids. Mr, Cochrane says thlat he can understand the frustration of the man on the street 'who can't see why the director of education should be earning what he does — $42,924 per year in 1976. But he says, every director of education in the counties surrounding. Huron makes more. When the interviewer asked who else in the county makes that kind of money, he replied "who. else runs a system with 800 employees?" He says his salary Should be compared with what adniinistentorS with other boards get, not with different jobs within the county, A consulting firm once did a job description analysis, comparing jobs and salaries in industry and school administration;. Mr Cochrane` says.. At the-lep jobs they levelled the graph off because in every case the top man in industry with a job comparable to the director Of education's was Making a lot MOM itioneyf say $66,000. It's when people criticize his wife and kids, because of his salary, that John Cochrane gets really angry. "It's not their fault." Anyway, someone's got to pay income tax for all the other welfare cases, he says. ,Besides the fact that the same job pays more in other counties of comparable size, the Huron director of education says that because of the province-wide equalization of education grants, education expenses, including salaries, are financed more by Toronto people than "out of the local pocket." Grants are based on the ability to pay and cities, like Toronto, with their higher assessments, pay a bigger percentage of their education bill than Huron does. Huron gets a 70% grant, which means that only 30% of the school budget is raised here, the rest coming from provincial taxes, some of which, of course, are also raised here. Not harder up Keeping this in mind, Mr. Cochiane says local schoolS really aren't harder up than they were before the county boards. And although he feels they still lag behind city schools in offering special sery ices, Huron schools are better. than they were before regionalization. Two teams of special education teachers, one team working with learning disabilities and one with speech problems, visit all schools. Every elementary school has a remedial teacher and gets help front the special educational teams in diagnosing problems. A former principal at Central Huron Secondary School- in Clinton, John Cochrane likes to see a lot of courses offered at Huron Right Schools. It's not ecenernical to have music , or drama bffered at every school hi the county but 11"S board policy that Students frein any county high school can take one of these special courses at one of the other schools, if he or she can get there. ' Mr. Cochrane says that the board may look into providing transportation for students who want to take a special course at another school in the county. They don't have to pay extra for the courses as long as they are not offered at the student's home school. The board will also pay the tuition costs for a student to attend high school out of the county, if the courses they need aren't available at an / of the schools here . That is, as long as the courses are helping a student work towards an occupation-. "We have to look at the whole transportation system", he says, noting that there is a good vocal music program at Clinton and a good instrumental one at Goderich and "there should be some way of sharing." Lose Out He agrees that, as far as extra courses go, kids in the small high schools, like SDHS, lose 'omit. • The high school in Seaforth will probably-have to become "some sort of exclusive or different school in order to continue to exist." They cant hope to imitate the big schools in the county and shouldn't try to." • In the future SDHS could specialize in some area, perhaps foreign languages or as acrack academic schOol, and hopefully attract kids from other schools, the director of education suggests.. Individual principals have a lot of leeway in running their schools, under Huron board policy. For example, "quite deliberately" the Huron board has no policy on the use of the strap - it's up to the principal. "My basic philosophy is that we are paying these men a good salary to run their own show, not so we have to look over their shoulders," Mr. Cochrane says. He adds that Huron ,probably gives principals more autonomy than do many boards. "It's a decentralized operation.' Because of this, the atmosphere in each of the 31 Huron schools can be very different. Basically, the principal sets the tone but often, staff members have differences in philosophy, "It depends a lot on the age of the staff," He says he's intrigued by an education program proposed in British Columbia Which would see authoritarian arid pertnissive school's in the same systeni. Parents could then choose which type of school their child should attend, Mr.Cochrane agrees that kids these days are aggressive and come- to school Prepared to ask quettions, not just answer them. "If they don't like tOgnethingi they wine right to the top" he two kids from one county school who marched right in to see him at his office with a grievance. Complaints People with complaints can go to their local trustee "we encourage that" and to the local principal Unexectedly, most complaints aren't about discipline problems that a particular student might have, they're about courses or a student's future and a parent's fear that he's not getting all the help he needs. The director says that he doesn't get too much criticism here that schools aren't stressing the basics. But he's not convinced that the criticism generally is valid. Most kids take core subjects anyway , the credit system is `not all bad. It means more can graduate." He points out that it was pretty sad in the old' days when a student, had to repeat a whole year after failing one subject. "Why is it so important?" is his just reaction to the fact that a. ,survey last winter showed very few Canadian high school students can name all the provinces in geographical order. It's an offshoot of the age in which we live, he feels. Kids • hitchhike around Europe looking at far away fields but don't learn about their own country. - He's a lukewarm nationalist who says Canada has a "national inferiority complex". It's okay to be nationalistic "but not as nationalistic as some of our neighbours", he sums up. (Continued on Page 14) • says, chuckling as he tells about THE BRUSSELS POST, OCTOBER 8, 1978 ,13 I Wanted Used 6 qt. baskets and 'clean glass larS.• Open days a Week; Phone 887 ,688g 1 r