The Ward 11 seat on the Toronto Catholic District School Board will remain vacant until Angela Kennedy decides whether or not to appeal the recent conflict of interest ruling that ousted her.
The board's provincially appointed supervisor, Richard Alway, said an appointment to the seat would not happen until Kennedy's appeal period, which ends 30 days after the Aug. 19 ruling, has lapsed."We took legal advice on it and they said first of all we can't do it the way we usually do, which is ads in the paper and interviews and so on because it would take two months to do that, and that's all the time we've got (until the Oct. 25 elections)," he said Monday, Aug. 30. "So we decided to just use common sense, so we're making very sure that we don't jump the gun here and find ourselves into a process of replacement and then suddenly there's an appeal filed."The Ontario Superior Court of Justice declared Kennedy's East York/Toronto trustee seat vacant after ruling the three-term trustee and full-time nurse had breached the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act during lay-off discussion at a May 14, 2008 budget meeting. At the time, Kennedy's son Kevin was a part-time occasional education assistant and her other son Brian had just successfully interviewed as an occasional teacher for the board.In an interview last week, Kennedy said she was "disappointed" with the ruling. While she's already decided that she won't run to be trustee again, she still had yet to decide if she would appeal the conflict of interest ruling.The Education Act requires that a qualified person be appointed to fill such a vacancy within 90 days of the court order. Alway said as soon as the 30-day appeal period is ended, he intends to make the appointment in such a way as to cause the "least amount of concern or division."With the beginning of the school year looming next week, however, some parents in Ward 11 - which houses 10 elementary schools and three high schools - are fearful the lack of a trustee to advocate for them will hurt their children.Ward 11 trustee candidate Kevin Morrison, Catholic School Advisory Committee (CSAC) co-chair and parent of two young daughters bound for St. John Catholic School come September, said he has personally sent a letter to Alway making several requests on behalf of area parents to help ease some of their concerns.Those requests include:- to issue a directive to board staff, principals and teachers making them aware of the problem created by the trustee vacancy and advise them to be extra sensitive to the needs of parents and children. - to issue a public statement to parents giving them a clear course of action to take should they have any concerns during the vacancy period. According to Alway, the board has already sent out a special communication to principals, vice principals and superintendents asking that they be extra diligent in servicing requests and expressions of concern in the ward.Parents, he urged, should contact their children's school or the area superintendent if they have any questions of concerns.