There are at least two minimum requirements necessary for being a school trustee in New Westminster: 1. You must be committed to education, and 2: You must have a thick skin.
Once again parents have rallied and called for trustees to resign, and the same parents have asked for, at the very least, a review of a possible amalgamation of New Westminster school district with the Burnaby school district.
The trustees are not going to resign, so let's just move on to the second matter. Would amalgamating with the Burnaby school district help New Westminster students? It would be nice to see a definitive study on the pros and cons of such an amalgamation. After all, Coquitlam's school district is an amalgamation of Port Moody, Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam, and, while it is also struggling with budget issues, it certainly appears to run more smoothly. Their secondary schools don't look like wartorn apartment blocks in Romania, and their trustees don't seem to spend an inordinate time sniping at one another.
One can't help but wonder if New Westminster would still be without a new high school if it had joined with the Burnaby school district years ago. We think not, if only for one reason: the Burnaby school district is one political block aligned with the NDP. Like their brothers and sisters on Burnaby city council, they almost always agree on everything, and they align themselves along similar philosophical lines.
New Westminster's school board, on the other hand, is split along political lines almost equally. Should this matter where local education is concerned? Perhaps not. But it does make a large difference in how the trustees operate with each other, with staff and with groups in the city. Almost every step seems to involve a battle of some sort.
It's a moot point, in any case. The Ministry of Education clearly doesn't want to step into the amalgamation debate. And Burnaby trustees and district management keep their opinions to themselves. Some pundits have suggested that Burnaby would be foolish to amalgamate with New Westminster and inherit a new mess. Or a very old mess, as the case may be.
