by Moira MacDonald, The Toronto Sun

For as long as I can remember covering the education beat there have been calls for an ombudsman to keep an eye on schools.

The idea has gone nowhere.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin has been clear he sees his role as the public’s watchdog on government, pushing it, shaming it if necessary, to follow the rules and standards it has set for itself and to be accountable for the delivery of taxpayer-funded services.

But not everything is covered. Ontario’s education ministry falls under Marin’s mandate. But where the rubber really hits the road in the school system — schools and the boards that run them — is off-limits to him. Marin can’t touch them — unless they get taken over provincially, like the Toronto Catholic school board.

Toronto District School Board trustee Josh Matlow has stood up on his soapbox occasionally over the last year to call for Marin’s powers to be extended — and to condemn what Matlow says is a proposal by new board director Chris Spence to create a board ombudsman that would report to Spence.

More substantial is a recommendation expected to come to TDSB trustees in March from its special education advisory committee, initiated by a parent who sits on it. It calls for the board to set up an ombudsman who would be “fully independent, impartial” and “confidential,” in helping parents, staff, students and community members resolve conflicts and complaints with the board.

Christina Buczek, a mother of two special needs students in the TDSB who initiated the motions, says she started out proposing an ombudsman for cases involving special needs students, but was persuaded to extend her motion to include all board programs.

‘Squeaky wheel’

“There’s no accountability,” Buczek told me. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease ... but it shouldn’t be that way — there should be a process open for all people.”

Buczek, a one-time trustee candidate and former chair of the committee, has had her own tussles as she advocated for services for her children over the years.

Her story is one I have heard repeatedly from special needs parents, including the time she says she was banned from her daughter’s school over a misheard conversation, under a terrible piece of education legislation allowing anyone, including parents, to be issued a trespass notice without due process or appeal. Buczek could not even escort her daughter to the school door.

If that’s not the sort of thing Marin could get his hands into, I don’t know what would be.

Predictably, things aren’t sounding good from the trustee side.

Trustees’ job

Trustee James Pasternak, vice-chair of the special education committee, doubts Buczek’s motion will pass next month. Trustees — already worried about becoming an endangered species — feel advocacy on behalf of constituents is their job and an ombudsman “could undermine our current policy of shared solutions.” Besides, Pasternak believes the ultimate problem in special education isn’t staff not following the rules, it’s — wait for it — underfunding.

“What we have in place is not perfect, but I think it’s pretty good,” Pasternak told me.

But not good enough. An ombudsman would be there to advocate in the most extreme cases and identify systemic problems — and by doing so, gradually cut down on the less severe cases through a message to the system that somebody with teeth is watching and it had better play by the rules.

But the best place for this isn’t the TDSB. It’s at the province. And if the McGuinty Liberals really want to make good on their promise to rebuild public confidence in the school system, they’ll install the full set of accountability checks and balances, including an ombudsman.

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