Minister Roberge,
In memory of our many discussions and our exchanges, I could have started my letter by beginning with “dear Jean-François”, but I opted for the formalities and the decorum which return to the role of your function.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
I salute you all the credit for having remained at the helm of the Ministry of Education since the 2018 elections. On the one hand, no minister has occupied this seat as long as you have since Mr. Claude Ryan of 1985 to 1990. On the other hand, I do not remember that a pedagogue from the base – a primary school – had the opportunity to sit at the head of this ministry as many doctors and economists have sat as health or economy ministers. You have brought a certain stability notwithstanding the health situation that we all know. Hats off to Mr. Roberge!
Although I left your network to live new enriching professional experiences, I remained informed and a critical observer of the Quebec school network out of sympathy for former colleagues and an ongoing concern for the thousands of Quebec students.
It was with dismay that I learned, last week, of the behaviors that have persisted for many years at Saint-Laurent High School despite the reports of several staff members.
Learning that observations of student abuse were ignored by the school administration strikes me as professional negligence. When, moreover, this same school administration sets out to blame bitterly and in a threatening manner a worker responsible for ensuring the health of the students who presented herself as a whistleblower, this becomes harassment and in the end , it was the well-being of young adolescent girls that was at stake. In such a context, I wonder what the obligations of the various professional bodies involved with students are. What protection do they have when one of them is required to report an emergency? Then, on the other hand, what are the limits to the jurisdiction and authority of a school principal over his staff in the Quebec school system?
These previous questions lead me, Mr. Roberge, to recall our many exchanges from 2010 to 2013 to know what are we waiting for to create a structure that can ensure the interest and well-being of each student by governing the roles and professional responsibilities of each pedagogical employment group in the school network.
Such a structure could have intervened to protect the “whistleblower” and thus prevent the abuse that students had already suffered from continuing.
What was the usefulness and scope of the “protector” of the student in this sad story?
To go further, we must go upstream and think of those who supervise school management. Although he can claim not to have been informed, does not the executive council which supervised the school administration also have a responsibility in this shameful story? Wasn’t it a duty for senior managers to be well informed so as to react according to the quality of the services provided in their schools?
Thus, Mr. Minister, what have you put in place since your election to put order in a school network within which we observed, you and I, abuses and negligence?
Restructuring school boards to make them service centers is not a panacea. In my humble opinion, and as we were discussing this together more than 10 years ago, Quebec needs a professional order that supports Quebec teachers with a deontological and ethical framework much more than a obscure “protector” of the student.
Finally, we must never forget that every student counts!