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Public Opinion on School Board Trustees in the Early 1990s

By: Jennifer Peers

The school board trustee is a locally elected member of the public and advocate for education. While people vaguely know what a school board trustee is, most may not realize the amount of influence that these individuals have in decisions related to schools. Some of the responsibilities of a school board trustee include assisting in the development of the school’s strategic plans, holding the school accountable to its strategic plans, helping to determine the allocation of resources and creating goals for student’s wellbeing and academic achievement.

We collected nine Canadian survey questions from 1993 to 1997 on the topic of school board trustees. The survey questions and corresponding data have been shared on Open ICPSR for those interested in the data. One of the conclusions that can be made based on the collected data, is that the issue of whether to have school board trustees is divisive. For instance, respondents were asked if they think schools should continue to be governed by school board trustees or whether they should be governed by a volunteer or unpaid council of parents and community members who are elected by an annual meeting of local residents? The results of this survey for 1993 and 1995 show that respondents were closely split on this issue

Question: In most places in Canada, schools are governed by school board trustees who are elected by local voters in regularly scheduled elections. Do you think that schools should continue to be governed this way or would you prefer schools to be governed by a volunteer, unpaid council of parents and community members, who are elected in much the same way as ratepayer executives, that is, by those who attend an annual meeting of local residents?
Answer Options:  1993 n=2001  1995 n=2037
Continue to be governed by elected school trustees47%45%
Governed by volunteer, unpaid council of parents and community members42%45%
Don’t know/Not applicable11%10%

The consistent split between the two years is evidence that there is a number of people who want to continue to have the school board trustee position and a relatively similar number of people who would prefer for schools to have an elected volunteer council made up of parents and community members. The findings from this survey also correlate with a survey question asking the respondents if they feel their school board trustee does a good job or poor job of representing their interests on education issues. The results of this survey were not as equally split but reflect a division amongst people on the issue of school board trustees with 58.9% of respondents saying they do a good job and 41.1% saying they do a poor job.

Like the public servant, the school board trustee is growing increasingly subject to scrutiny, as the public has begun to demand more accountability and transparency. A simple scan of the recent news is evidence of that fact, with multiple school board trustees resigning or being removed from their position for issues such as racial discrimination. As these conversations continue to be had, it will be interesting to see if the issue of whether to have school board trustees continues to be divisive.

Compiling Research to Find the Ethical Investor

By Lindsay Mewhiney & Monika Nawrocki

Over the past six weeks, we worked to develop an annotated bibliography examining what the academic literature says about ‘ethical investing’. For this research, we partnered with Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative, who seeks to apply our result to support the organization’s efforts to buy and manage multi-unit residential and commercial properties for the environmental, social, and economic benefit of Waterloo Region. This research attempt to answer the questions of “why do people invest in ethical investments?” and “who is likely to invest in impact/ethical investments?”. By answering these questions, future projects will be able to utilize this research to more effectively market ethical investment products and identify potential consumers.

After consulting with Sean Campbell of Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative and Anthony Piscitelli of Conestoga College, we searched databases with a list of key terms and added relevant sources into our document. After further analyzing sources, we wrote annotated bibliographies for a total of 39 sources to provide a concise summary of each source and its practical implications for research regarding ethical investing and understanding investor motivations. 

The research we conducted primarily discusses ethical investor motivations, investor profiles, and how ethical investment marketing and communication materials for consumers can be improved to increase rates of ethical investing. This compiled research will contribute to future projects with the goal of improving economic, social, and environmental health in the community, carried out by Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative and partner organizations.

The annotated bibliography can be found here:

https://threehundredthirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ethical-Investments-Annotated-Bibliography.pdf

2020 Student Blog Series

In January 2020 ThreeHundredThirtyEight.com introduced a new blog series featuring content written by Conestoga College Public Service Program students.

Seven student blog posts appeared in the series:

A Progressive Country with an Archaic Electoral System, Is There a Need for Reform? By: Shane Calderwood

Rent Control: The Hidden Truth By: Onomo Ogbe

Abortion In Canada, Are Charter Rights being Infringed Upon? By: Emalee Patrick

How safe are Canadian School Buses? By: Olufunke Pegba-Otemolu

It’s time for Universal Pharmacare in Canada By: Sarah Jefferies

Carbon Tax is Not Enough – the Rich Can (and Will) Keep Polluting By: Lindsay Mewhiney

How secularism became Quebec’s Achilles heel By: Jennifer Peers