The boardroom is smaller than it looks on camera, and cozier and everyone's very nice and welcoming. It doesn't feel as formal as it looks, so I started out a little less formal than I should have been. It's hard to remember all the "through the chair" things to say. They gave us two books on procedure (Roberts Rules), and I haven't opened either one yet. Something I knew to expect and that was entirely reinforced by this experience, though, is that the corporate secretaries or managers, the ones you've never heard of, run the show and keep everything organized and are an incredible resource and remarkably accommodating.
When I first considered campaigning, I asked how much a trustee gets paid, and I was always given a range from about $6,000 to $25,000. It's a honorarium based on student numbers, so it has no benefits or any extras attached to it, and it changes a bit each years. But I wasn't sure if that would be a yearly lump sum dumped in my bank account without notice or what. I started Nov. 14th, and got my first pay on Dec. 2. It's $541.64, so I assume that's paid bi-weekly, and I imagine for 26 pays, for a total of $14,082.64. I was just emailed that my gross pay is $16,185.31 per year, so that sounds about right. Funny that nobody will be upfront about that! It's very much a part-time job. If I work twenty hours/week, which is likely, then I'll be making minimum wage. For comparison, a trustee takes home $240/week and a crossing guard makes $170/week; as a teacher, I took home $1,270 a week, and the associate directors - we have two of them now - make over $4,000/week. But, on top of my pay, I also get a small allowance for phone use (not sure how much yet), and mileage if I drive to to meetings, and free subscriptions to The Record, The Star, and The Globe and Mail. I already pay for a Star subscription, and I'll just keep that one myself.
It involves way more meetings than I expected. There are only 2-3 meetings each month that are open to the public, so that's what I thought I'd be in for, but tons more go on behind the scenes. Every Monday has a meeting that starts at 6:00 pm, and then there are committee meetings outside of that - so far it looks like they average about 1-2 each week, but I have four next week, one each evening. Almost all the meetings are in the evenings, right around dinner time, I guess because lots of trustees have another job during the day, but it's difficult for those of us who are night blind! I can't drive at night - one of the reasons I put off getting a car for so long since the times I most want to drive, I'm not able to anyway. Luckily, I can do many of the meetings online, because it's more than an hour's walk to get there and a little too dark on trails even for cycling.
A few days before each meeting, we get readings that are sometimes 60-100 pages long. Luckily I'm pretty quick at reading and understanding information thrown at me. We get the agenda and pages (folio) on Fridays before the Monday meetings, but any questions have to be submitted by the end of the day Thursday, before getting the agenda and info! Questions aren't spontaneously asked in meetings, so everyone's ready with the answers. The agenda is confidential until it comes out on Fridays, so there must be a sneaky way people know what will be discussed at the meeting that I'm not yet privy to that enables them to come up with questions the previous day.
I get literally hundreds of emails and phone calls about a wide variety of issues. Right now, most are about mask mandates from parents worried about their children and about the IHRA (the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Working Definition of Antisemitism) motion that's coming up for discussion on Dec. 12. I recognize that I'm hearing from all the parents who want mask mandates, and other trustees are likely hearing from parents who don't want schools to have anything to do with masks! I've already had a concerned citizen threaten to sue me over social media for giving medical advise without a license because I hope to encourage masks in class. But I've also heard from educators with constant rotating absences unlike any they've seen in prior years, not enough supply teachers available, and some concerns with student violence in the classroom from parents and educators, and some concerns with parental threats of violence over the phone from educators, and lots of concerns about traffic on the way to school. And then, also important, are concerns about the IEP process and the lack of cafeteria services in high schools.
I introduced my first Notice of Motion on requesting masks in school last Monday. The very brief Notice of Motion went through about four re-writes from different people, including the director, before I could bring it to the table. All I had to do during the meeting was to read it, and I started off with, "Notion of Motion." So that's cool. You can't present a motion without a seconder, and it took a while to find someone who wants anything to do with this issue. Now I wait to find out when we'll be discussing it and voting on it to see if it will do anything to help mitigate spread in the classroom.
I often feel like I should be preparing for some meetings, but sometimes I'm not sure how. Last night I had a "trustee seminar" meeting, that happen monthly, and I had no idea what it was about. It's a bit uncomfortable to have so many unknowns and to feel pretty much constantly unprepared!
Finally, there's limited time to ask questions or introduce new topics - literally just ten minutes at the end of a long board meeting, which means it can take weeks to be heard on a specific issue. If I want to ask a quick question by email, I have to go through proper channels (which I'm still getting my head around), and make sure to copy in the director, superintendents, board chairs, etc. to make sure everyone knows that I asked that question even if it's just something that feels very minor. In part it's so they have the finger on the pulse of everything going on and can be aware of all conversations with the public, but I find it a little unnerving when it feels like my line of reasoning or thought-process is being scrutinized (unlike people reading my very overt thoughts here!). The wheels of bureaucracy, and all that.
ETA, four months later, and not much further along in my understanding of all the process, I finally nailed what it feels like: that time I joined Instagram. My kids encouraged me to get on it and helped me through the steps.
"So I don't write anything. I just post photos?"
"Yes, post photos and you can add your story."
"So there IS writing, but not like Twitter or Facebook?"
"Just post your photos, mum."
Then I posted a bunch of photos, and they came running it, "STOP POSTING PHOTOS!!"
"But you just told me..."
"You can't post so many at once!"
"So what's the right number to post and how frequently?"
"There IS no number; you just have to get the hang of it."
And I never went on Instagram again.
I don't have enough motivation to feel out the unwritten rules of the game, and I sometimes wonder how long my motivation will last as a Trustee. I feel like, every time I say something, I've done it wrong in a way I don't understand, and even when I say nothing, I've done that wrong too because they were waiting for me to say a thing, typically to re-ask a question that was already pre-answered through email, despite how inconsequential that artificial exchange would be. It's like a celebrity interview that tries to feel unscripted, but it's so clearly rehearsed. Can't superintendents just say, I want to clarify...? Apparently not.
Even better, we could post links to current issues of concern on the website with a FAQs section for each link to make things crystal clear, outlining precisely why the board wants to do a thing, and a form that parents can use to post questions and get answers from the person who's actually directly involved, maybe even within 24 hours or so. And how about a place for parents to upload presentations on each side of issues so people can better understand their concerns?! The presentations could still be vetted, like delegates are now. As it stands, parents ask me questions, and I have to figure out who that question goes to, then ask the parent's question to the superintendent, making sure to copy in all the senior team, then, maybe a week or two later, try to ask that question in a 10-minute window of time at the end of a very long meeting. And then if it gets asked, there's a lengthy process around how to deal with it that is illustrated perfectly in The Good Place S03E10, when Michael finally gets a Good Place team to listen to him about the problems with the system: It'll just take 400 years to choose the people to sit on the committee to try to get to the bottom of the problem!
Curious.
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