Negotiations at impasse with French board
It may end up in court.
With the clock ticking toward a Monday deadline imposed by Education Minister Jean-François Roberge, an overcrowded French school board has rejected the idea of sharing schools operated by the English Montreal School Board.
“As we stand right now, there is an impasse in the negotiations because they do not want to accept any cohabitation,” EMSB chair Angela Mancini told an EMSB meeting Wednesday night.
Roberge has given the EMSB until Monday to come up with a plan to help solve the overcrowding crisis at French schools, otherwise, he says he will transfer three English schools to the French board — the Commission Scolaire de la Pointede-l’Île (CSPI).
The three schools on Roberge’s list are General Vanier elementary school and John Paul I junior high school in St-Léonard, and Gerald McShane elementary school in Montreal North.
The governing boards of the three schools had agreed to cohabitation with the CSPI, Mancini said. In addition, the EMSB was offering two-thirds of Galileo Adult Education Centre.
But the CSPI said it could not accept cohabitation, Mancini said. Instead, it wants buildings outright.
She said the EMSB would discuss behind closed doors the option of seeking an injunction to block the Quebec government from unilaterally taking EMSB schools and giving them to the CSPI.
Several EMSB commissioners said they supported legal action.
EMSB vice-chairman Joe Ortona said it has been clear for weeks that the CSPI did not want cohabitation.
And though Roberge backed anglophone/francophone cohabitation, for the minister it was only a short-term solution, Ortona said.
“It’s not to give (the CSPI) time to buy land and eventually move out of our buildings,” Ortona said.
“So cohabitation is a short-term solution to boot us out of our own buildings because he has said very clearly he is not spending money to build schools for the French board when the English schools are half empty.”
EMSB parent commissioner Andrew Ross said the English board has offered the CSPI “a lot of flexibility and many different options.” He said the French board’s rejection of cohabitation is “insulting.”
“If they’re not willing to cohabitate, then the next step now is legal action because we can’t go back and forth forever,” Ross told the meeting. “And the CSPI will be out of luck because they will get nothing.”
EMSB spokesperson Mike Cohen told reporters the board was not ready to talk about whether it will seek an injunction.
“If the government makes a decision on June 10, some commissioners have indicated that’s an area they may want to go into.
“And as some commissioners said tonight, if they don’t agree to some kind of compromise, they would risk in a court case not getting any schools and then what would they do in September?”
Cohen said “we’ll have to see if they’re willing to come back to the drawing board and make a compromise because we’re in the month of June. We’re at the eleventh hour right now.”
He said the EMSB will “make it very clear to (Roberge) that we were prepared to do cohabitation. We acted in good faith. The ball will be in his court unless something new develops between now and literally Sunday night.”
If they’re not willing to cohabitate, then the next step now is legal action because we can’t go back and forth forever.