PUBLIC SCHOOL BOARD: Brousseau wants collaboration

Policy junkie invested in creating a better local school system

The soon-to-be-30-year-old laughs at the fact that his parents continue to ask him about school and acknowledges that his continued attendance at Brock University certainly gives the impression that he is still a student.

In fact, Michael Brousseau has been an employee of Brock since 2006, and graduated in 2010, and believes his employment at the university gives him the experience, and skills, to represent the community as a public school board trustee.

Brousseau graduated with his degree in Innovative Arts and Science, which he describes as a computer science degree that includes art, design and theory, and is currently pursuing his Masters of Education. As an employee of Brock he is currently Acting Maager of eLearning within the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation and also teaches web design.

A self-described policy junkie, Brousseau says he is really interested in how finding the right words to put down on paper can accomplish a great deal and he would like to be part of that process for the District School Board of Niagara (DSBN).

“Our students are growing up in a complicated world” and they are facing a number of complicated issues, both good and bad, and the school system needs to prepare students or that world, says Brousseau on why he wants to be a trustee.

More specifically, Brousseau and his wife of almost a year plan, one day, to have children and he wants to help improve the DSBN for the day when his future children are ready to start school.

Brousseau says he also wants to draw attention to the process, noting the DSBN has a huge mandate that includes millions of dollars in funding, more than 40,000 students in 115 schools and almost 2,500 teachers.

“They have a massive mandate and no one seems to give a damn,” he says, going on to note that when he tells people he is running for the position of trustee most people he talks to don’t know who is running or don’t remember who they voted for last election.

The trustees are largely ignored he says, admitting he doesn’t know who he voted for in 2014, and he would like the community to be more aware if not more involved.

You hear something is happening and you think “should we have talked about this” or “who made that decision,” says Brousseau.

A perfect example is the naming of the amalgamated E.W. Farr and Pelham Centre Schools to “Wellington Heights,” he says.

The board included the public in consultation on what the name of the amalgamated schools should be, told the public how the process would work and that the public chose the Wellington Heights name but a Freedom of Information Request showed the process and public choice for a school name was not what the board had said it was.

“It seems so straightforward,” says Brousseau on how a public consultation process should work: you ask the public what they want; the public tells you what they want; and you do what the public wants.

If you don’t intend to listen to the public, why hold public consultations at all, he wonders, about all public boards and committees, not just the school board.

Brousseau would support a return to the name of E.W. Farr for the Fenwick elementary school, if that’s what the public wants.

He would also support a new public consultation process, if that is needed to choose a name for the school, and take the public’s input “at face value.”

The Wellington Heights issue is symptomatic of bigger issues facing education, including a lack of transparency and confidence in the processes at the board level.

It’s not good enough to say we talked to parents, says Brousseau, you have to actually follow through and do what the community wants.

“We can do big things. We need to all be included.”

It’s not just parents and students, he adds, it’s the larger community, young and old, who need to be included in the public consultation aspect of school board decisions.

“It’s the building of the village to raise these kids.”

Brousseau also encourages everyone to read both the 1998 sex-ed curriculum and the newer sex-ed curriculum to gain a real understanding of what we’re talking about in the debate over which curriculum should be taught in schools.

Brousseau didn’t come out in support of one curriculum or the other, saying instead that whichever one you support we can all agree the recent changes have happened too quickly for teachers to be ready to teach the material in September. When pressed, Brousseau said there are aspects of the new curriculum that should be kept.

“The world that students are growing up in is different than the one we grew up in,” he says, and education today should reflect that, teaching not just technical skills but the real world skills kids will need to navigate the cyberworld safely.

Brousseau says he is new at political involvement and the school board trustee position but he’s very invested and motivated in creating a better education system for Niagara students and in talking to all stakeholders to achieve a better system.

Brousseau is up against Nancy Beamer of Ridgeville and incumbent Dale Ann Robinson from Thorold for the Public School Board Trustee role.