At their regular monthly meeting, the Council of Commissioners of the Lester B. Pearson School Board unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the Quebec government to reimburse all funds that the board is already forced to spend on school elections, which were postponed on two separate occasions last year, and is expected to finance when they are rescheduled.
"The government's decision to schedule school board elections last year in the middle of an unprecedented health crisis on two separate occasions made absolutely no sense given all of the potential public health risks. Thankfully, they eventually came around and postponed them but at the board level we incurred many additional costs to prepare for the elections and we don't think we should be stuck footing the bill out of operating expenses," said Mr. Noel Burke, Chairman of the LBPSB's Council of Commissioners.
Anglophone school board elections to fill certain vacant Ward seats as well as the position of Chairperson of the LBPSB were originally scheduled for November 1st 2020 but were rescheduled due to the worsening of the province's second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government subsequently changed the election dates to December 20th before once again postponing them due to rapidly increasing positive cases of COVID-19.
"It is a matter of equity' says LBPSB Director General Cindy Finn. In planning for these elections during a public health emergency, English school boards have had to incur additional costs such as the purchasing of masks, plexiglass, and hand sanitizer in order to keep the voting public safe. Because school election costs are not covered by the government, this means we must pay for these expenses out of our operating budget. As a result, our students lose out'.
