EMSB at war with parents committee over survey

The Central Parents Committee of the English Montreal School Board is furious, alleging that the board's top administrator blocked principals from sending home a survey questionnaire for parents.

In a letter to EMSB school principals obtained by CBC, the committee said the principals had become "pawns in a political drama."

Peter Mercuri, the head of the parents committee, said the goal of the survey is to hear from parents on a wide range of issues.

"These are questions that deal with bullying, or violence in schools, or technology. There's nothing incendiary about the way we've asked the questions. It's all very innocuous. These are all things that parents should have a voice on to be able to express themselves," Mercuri said.

Monday deadline

Mercuri said the parents committee printed out 20,000 copies of the survey and sent them to principals at all EMSB schools to distribute. He said this is standard procedure.

He said that principals then received a directive from Robert Stocker, the director-general of the board, ordering them not to send the surveys home.

Mercuri said he then wrote to Stocker, saying if he did not rescind his order by Monday afternoon, the parents committee "would be taking appropriate action to contest these actions using all means at our disposal."

Mercuri said that deadline passed and the committee is now considering what to do next.

'It's politics'

Mercuri said he's convinced Stocker is taking orders from the elected board, also known as the Council of Commissioners.

"It's politics. When roughly 40,000 parents can go ahead and express themselves and that data then becomes public knowledge, then maybe our council of commissioners has to actually stand up and take notice of what they said, rather than doing what they feel like doing," Mercuri said.

He said board members had mentioned at previous meetings that they felt they had not been consulted enough about the survey. He called that a "flimsy excuse."

"We've asked for their feedback and their consultation for many months now. This was met with either silence or something that said they weren't willing to offer any support," Mercuri said.

Repeated calls to the EMSB were not returned.

Correction : An earlier version of this story said that the Central Parents Committee had printed 40,000 copies of its survey. In fact, the committee printed 20,000 copies.(May 06, 2015 3:03 PM)