The current administration is disconnected from the financial and academic challenges English schools are facing, she said.
Katherine Korakakis, the president of the English Parents’ Committee Association of Quebec, is throwing her hat in the ring to become the next chair of the English Montreal School Board.
The English boards will be holding their elections on Nov. 3.
Korakakis said it was the urging of numerous parents and a decision made by the EMSB council at the end of the last school year that convinced her to run. A motion to provide schools with an extra $15,000 each to help with the purchase of supplies and funding school programs was overturned by the board and its chair on the basis that schools already had sufficient funds, she said.
“I thought that was an example of how disconnected the current board is from the reality of what’s going on in the schools,” Korakakis told The Gazette. “If we’re so well funded, why are we wasting our time making popcorn bags and baking muffins in order to raise money? Do you know how many popcorn bags we would have to sell to make $15,000?
“That to me showed they were pretty disconnected, and a lot of other parents, too, who asked me to run.”
Korakakis has served as the president of the English Parents’ Committee Association of Quebec for four years, advocating on behalf of caregivers, writing briefs and presenting them before the National Assembly in Quebec City and speaking to the education minister.
A parent of two, Korakakis is also president of the EMSB Parents Committee; a member of the Advisory Board of English Education, appointed by the education minister; and vice-president of the Quebec Community Groups Network.
Based on her many conversations with parents, her main priorities as head of the EMSB would be to increase the amount of mental health services available to students and bolster programs dedicated to special-needs and gifted students.
“We don’t have a ton of them, and even for those we do have, they’re not well known, and they’re certainly not available in every school,” Korakakis said.
“If I win, it’s my intention to come up with programs to help bring those grades up because at the end of the day, you can pass it with 60 per cent, but does that mean that the student has mastered that subject matter?”
Korakakis said she will run with a slate of other candidates. She has already announced two — Shalani Bel, a parent who will run in Westmount, and Howie Silbiger, who will run in Côte-des-Neiges — and plans to announce more in the coming weeks and months.
The EMSB and other boards are also in court to overturn the CAQ government’s plan to abolish English school boards and replace them with service centres overseen by the provincial government, as was done with the French boards. The EMSB is arguing anglophones have the right to control and manage their school systems, based on Supreme Court decisions that referred to Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
English boards remain in place after the Quebec Superior Court ruled the law eliminating boards should not apply to English ones. An appeal is expected to be heard late this year or next year.
The EMSB is Quebec’s biggest English board, with 44,000 students in its youth and adult sectors. Its annual budget is $410 million.
In the last election in 2021, the vast majority of positions at the EMSB were filled by acclamation, with board officials blaming several factors, including confusion over who could run and pandemic restrictions and delays.
English boards traditionally had much higher voter turnout rates compared with the now-abolished French boards. In 2014, for example, 21 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots in the EMSB election, compared with 4.9 per cent for French boards.
If elected, Korakakis said she will continue the legal battles being fought by the EMSB. She’s also running to improve the perception of the EMSB, saying families are leaving the board because they’re concerned their children can’t graduate with high enough levels of French, and because there’s a sense things aren’t working well.
“If things were perfect, parents would not have asked me to run,” she said. “I’m hoping to bring a different perspective and a different way of doing things at the EMSB.”