There are more Reboot Alberta people speaking out in the Edmonton Journal's Letters to the Editor. This time it is about school closures in Edmonton by the Edmonton Public School Board.
This time Dick Baker is commenting and noting that communities need more say in what happens to a school.
Also read the letter from Rebooter Christopher Spencer on school closure.
Full disclosure: Last year my firm, Cambridge Strategies Inc. did a conjoint study for the Edmonton Public School Board. It focused on the key values that Edmontonian feel that should guide and drive issues and approaches to school closure. Here is a link to the Powerpoint on the survey findings that underscores the points being made in these letters from Rebooters
The most important values attributed to a school to a community were dominated by two criteria. There is the balance between space and cost issues but the dominant need was for a focus on being able to provide a quality education. Distance from school was not so critical povided kids did not have to go beyond 3 kms.
Schools were seen as vital to the health and vibrancy of the overall community. So the school closure issues are much more than cost, it is about education quality and the sense of community. There was a dominant value focus on keeping a school open and adpated to meet community needs regardless of enrollment statistics.
The education focus of a school was the most important consideration. That was seem as providing extensive programming, with a focus on an adaptive school culture that really prepares students for their future. The key education element there was seen as a focus on creativity and social integration skills, preparation for post-secondary. Other important educational concerns was about developing the individual skills of students to prepare them for the workforce and also deal with citizenship and character development. Standardized test results were not highly vallued as measures of quality education.
This all begs questions of governance and how the province, school boards, municipalities and community groups work together to not only save a school but turn it into a community facility that provides quality education and better integrates and also serves larger community needs. It is a culture shift that is all about integration of uses and recources to meet more community needs including education.
The studies have been done and wrap-around schools are concepts that are well proven to work and benefit education and community outcomes. The full cost and life cycle accounting methods for multi-use adaptive facility design is ready to be made the new standard for educational infrastructure decisions. The political will is there to make this cultural shift from the current Minister of Education. There a need for a more effective collaborative linking of the local community, the municipality and school boards to serve the greater good of neighbourhoods and students best interests when considering school closure decisions.
The question is larger than just enrollment levels. It is about what we "value" as a society and not just about what it "costs" in dollar terms alone. Citizens know this and have told us that they value community needs and school services as integrated wholes, not as isolated silos. It is time for some comprehenseive, forward thinking good governance coupled with a dash of political courage. We need to change the old culture about such decisions where school closures are mostly about dollar costs and not the value of a school and its facilities to serve community concerns. Simply closing a school forecloses the adaptive and imaginative opportunity costs and chances for community capacity building. Those options are lost in a shortsighted school closure decision.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Connectivity is Key to Improved Productivity
I harp about Harper a lot on this blog. But when they do something right I like to applaud the effort. There is a disasterous state of digitization in Canada. There is poor rural access to high-speed Internet. We have userous wireless cost structures run by the oilgarchy of Rogers, Bell and Telus. An we have the indifference of the CRTC to the pubic good in terms of effective regulation.
Now the Harper government seems intent on at least shedding light on this situation.
In Alberta we have a wonderful opportnity to leap ahead in terms of digital connectivity and productivity because of the foresight of the SuperNet. However our goverment seems disinterested in making it available to every citizen, which is possible if you have a copperwire telephone line in you home or business.
Telus owns those lines and have refused to negotiate Internet access to the SuperNet through them. The CRTC recently bought a bogus argument that such use would interfere with other telephone use, something called crosstalk. The technology has advanced way past that problem. Nevertheless, the CRTC recently refused a complaint by an Edmonton based Internet Service Provider to require competative acces to the Telus copper wire and in the process the Commission embarassed themselves in holding to such an arcaine misunderstanding of the technological reality of today.
Poor productivity is a major issue facing the Canadian and Alberta economies. Connectivity is a key to improved productivity. The world gets it and has started to move way past the pedantic and pathetic connectivity policies of Canada. Alberta is perhaps the most to bear the brunt of such criticism. We have the SuperNet and a government with no sense of its potential or how to realize it for the benfit of Albertans. Sad but true.
Now the Harper government seems intent on at least shedding light on this situation.
In Alberta we have a wonderful opportnity to leap ahead in terms of digital connectivity and productivity because of the foresight of the SuperNet. However our goverment seems disinterested in making it available to every citizen, which is possible if you have a copperwire telephone line in you home or business.
Telus owns those lines and have refused to negotiate Internet access to the SuperNet through them. The CRTC recently bought a bogus argument that such use would interfere with other telephone use, something called crosstalk. The technology has advanced way past that problem. Nevertheless, the CRTC recently refused a complaint by an Edmonton based Internet Service Provider to require competative acces to the Telus copper wire and in the process the Commission embarassed themselves in holding to such an arcaine misunderstanding of the technological reality of today.
Poor productivity is a major issue facing the Canadian and Alberta economies. Connectivity is a key to improved productivity. The world gets it and has started to move way past the pedantic and pathetic connectivity policies of Canada. Alberta is perhaps the most to bear the brunt of such criticism. We have the SuperNet and a government with no sense of its potential or how to realize it for the benfit of Albertans. Sad but true.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Feature Story on Reboot Alberta Supporter Fred Martin is Worth a Read
I met Fred Martin for coffee and a chat in anticipation of Reboot Alberta 2.0 at the end of February. We talked a bit of shop as lawyers do but mostly we talked about the need for change in the political culture of Alberta.
Fred is part of the Reboot Alberta progressive citizen's movement. We talked about what it meant to be a progressive in Alberta in the 21st century and how it had to be different from the values that dominated the 20th century. The new progressive movements that are forming in the States are grounded in the kinds of consciousness that was so much part of the social justice movements in the 1960s. Fred Martin was there!
Fred is featured in the Edmonton Journal today around his personal involvement and commitment to social justice issues in the States back in the day and yes, even today. Fred's story is worth a read. It will help those of us already in the Reboot Alberta movement and others who are still at the curious stage to get a sense of what Reboot Alberta is about. It is an emerging citizens movement intent on influencing the direction and destination of politics in Alberta. It is not a political party.
I don't remember who said that "History does not repeat itself. It rhymes." We can learn a lot from the values, commitment and socila justice experiences of citizens like Fred Martin. What we learn is to build on past strengths and events but do not presume tomorrow will be a repeat of yesterday.
Modernists, like the PC Party, and Traditionalists, like the Wildrose Alliance Party make that mistake all the time. For example, PCs seem to be waiting for oil and gas prices to return and that will be enough to attract the same old kind of economic investments of the past. The oilsands are the exception to such short term thinking because they are long term investments. Oilsands companies as tenants and Albertans as resource owners have lots of work to do on the social and environment impacts of oilsands development.
The WAP wants to return Alberta to an even older and even more inappropriate set of parternalistic authoritarian social values. They want to take Alberta all the way back tothe 1950s where government, as the father who knows best, controls our morality and defines our society on an "Us versus Them" approach. That old-style Tea-Party kind of anger and anguish comes from people who are longing for a time that is has outlived its usefullness and effectiveness decades ago. But they are becoming a force in Alberta's politics these days.
Progressive values for the 21st century come from a place in the hearts and minds of people like Fred Martin. Alberta is full of such people but we have to find each other and reactivate our responsibilities as citizens in some forceful and effective way. Progressive Albertans have to reassert ourselves and return to activistists in the political culture of the province. Progressive values and ideas are vital if we, as a people and a province, are ever going to realize our full potential in a responsible and sustainable way.
Reboot Alberta is trying to facilitate that renewed sense of responsible citizenship in Alberta. Check it out and join us in helping the next Alberta to become more than the last Alberta was. Reboot Alberta is only 5 months old so give it some time to gel and get some focus. We know the value drivers of the Reboot Alberta movement members from a recent conjoint survey that will be published soon. A new survey of what Reboot Alberta should become is being circulated to current members and that will bring some clarity of where this citizen's movement goes next.
If you are concerned about the legacy of debt, environmental degradation and social problems that we are leaving our children and grand-children you might want to get involved in Reboot Alberta.
Fred is part of the Reboot Alberta progressive citizen's movement. We talked about what it meant to be a progressive in Alberta in the 21st century and how it had to be different from the values that dominated the 20th century. The new progressive movements that are forming in the States are grounded in the kinds of consciousness that was so much part of the social justice movements in the 1960s. Fred Martin was there!
Fred is featured in the Edmonton Journal today around his personal involvement and commitment to social justice issues in the States back in the day and yes, even today. Fred's story is worth a read. It will help those of us already in the Reboot Alberta movement and others who are still at the curious stage to get a sense of what Reboot Alberta is about. It is an emerging citizens movement intent on influencing the direction and destination of politics in Alberta. It is not a political party.
I don't remember who said that "History does not repeat itself. It rhymes." We can learn a lot from the values, commitment and socila justice experiences of citizens like Fred Martin. What we learn is to build on past strengths and events but do not presume tomorrow will be a repeat of yesterday.
Modernists, like the PC Party, and Traditionalists, like the Wildrose Alliance Party make that mistake all the time. For example, PCs seem to be waiting for oil and gas prices to return and that will be enough to attract the same old kind of economic investments of the past. The oilsands are the exception to such short term thinking because they are long term investments. Oilsands companies as tenants and Albertans as resource owners have lots of work to do on the social and environment impacts of oilsands development.
The WAP wants to return Alberta to an even older and even more inappropriate set of parternalistic authoritarian social values. They want to take Alberta all the way back tothe 1950s where government, as the father who knows best, controls our morality and defines our society on an "Us versus Them" approach. That old-style Tea-Party kind of anger and anguish comes from people who are longing for a time that is has outlived its usefullness and effectiveness decades ago. But they are becoming a force in Alberta's politics these days.
Progressive values for the 21st century come from a place in the hearts and minds of people like Fred Martin. Alberta is full of such people but we have to find each other and reactivate our responsibilities as citizens in some forceful and effective way. Progressive Albertans have to reassert ourselves and return to activistists in the political culture of the province. Progressive values and ideas are vital if we, as a people and a province, are ever going to realize our full potential in a responsible and sustainable way.
Reboot Alberta is trying to facilitate that renewed sense of responsible citizenship in Alberta. Check it out and join us in helping the next Alberta to become more than the last Alberta was. Reboot Alberta is only 5 months old so give it some time to gel and get some focus. We know the value drivers of the Reboot Alberta movement members from a recent conjoint survey that will be published soon. A new survey of what Reboot Alberta should become is being circulated to current members and that will bring some clarity of where this citizen's movement goes next.
If you are concerned about the legacy of debt, environmental degradation and social problems that we are leaving our children and grand-children you might want to get involved in Reboot Alberta.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Anticipating Alberta's Inspiring Education Report as a Game Changer
I know it is tough to herd cats. Imagine trying to do that with informed, articulate and engaged cats. That is a near impossible challenge but only if you are presecriptive about the desired outcome in advance. These kind of cats are near impossible to direct in any predetermined way once they are deployed. That has to be a metaphorical description of the task of the committee reporting on the outcomes of Dave Hancock's Inspiring Education consultation process.
Will we get a distilled report from a department perspective that is designed to be politically safe (a.k.a. bland and pointless). Or will the informed, articulate and engaged cats from the larger community have the pen and rule the day? If so, then I expect we be given a feast for thought and a call for further citizen engagement in public education. I will then anticipate some definite declarations of what ought to be our educational aspirations for Alberta moving forward..
Alberta's political culture is in turmoil and turbulent. It has retreated from good governance into a command and control topdown governing philsophy motivated by partisan political survival. Intimidation, coersion, pressure and threats from politicians, power brokers and even program managers against vulnerable citizens, community organizations, agencies and public service providers are becoming all too prevalent. It is more proof of the mounting evidence that our government, and many of our governing institutions, have lost their way; policy-wise, politically and morally.
In such a corrosive political culture we can expect meaningless double-speak and obfuscation if the government gets to politically frame the outcomes of an Inspiring Education report. On the other hand, if educators, Trustees and community members hold the pen, I hope for an expansive, inclusive, dynamic, comprehensive, generative warts-and-all aspirational and challenging report. I want to know from the report on the Inspiring Education process what our best minds think we need to do about the protecting and adpating public education in Alberta so our students are ready to face the future.
There are thousands of Albertans who know and care about the future of public education and many of them came together in the Inspiring Education process. We in Alberta, and Edmonton in particular, have a public education system that is the envy of the world. It has survived the attacks from those shallow thinkers who imposed simple minded "solutions" like competition and test standardization. That was no way to adapt a complex systems like public education to meet the changing world of the 21st century.
The open question going forward is will those Albertans who know and care about public education become engaged and rise to the political and public policy challenges ahead? In particular will they have the courage and character to rise to resist the partisan, self-preserving, politically motiviated challenges that are emerging and threatening to undermine and destroy public education in Alberta?
The great paradox of self-preserving political "leadership" is its tone deafness and ineptness for authentic communication with citizens. The problem, and the solution, is always seen by those who see their power and authority in decline, as a failure to communicate. When the citizens are way ahead of the politicians and the bureaucracy in understanding the problems, priorities, preferences and solutions the self-preserving politicians become paralyzed.
That is the cause of the real failure to effectively and authenticaly communicate. It is pretty much the political situation in Alberta today. It is not new. It was this way in the late 80's early 90's over debt and deficit. The Alberta population was way ahead of the political class on those issues. The communications broke down and the population expressed their displeasure. It eventually lead to the end of Don Getty's Premiership.
Polls tell us public confidence in the institutional powers-that-be and the political leadership in Alberta is now at, or approaching, an all time low. Systems are breaking down at a time when Alberta is poised to be one of the most compelling, renoun and quite possibly most celebrated places on the planet, thanks to the oilsands. All of this transformational possiblity can and will be squandered if Albertans don't get seriously re-engaged and reaffirm the rights and responsibilities of our citizenship.
We have to Reboot Alberta. We can do this by Progressive citizens taking Control back from the politicians, the media and the behind- the door power-brokers in the energy industry. We have to create Alternative 21st century institutions based on horizontal inclusive governance models that is citizen based and working in networked connected inclusive communities. We have to Delete concentrated political power that is centralized topdown command and control by reckless and feckless leadership supported by anemic and self-serving political parties.
How do we Progressives do it? There are a number of ways. One way is to take over the existing political institutions and change them from within. Another is to create new political institutions that can replace the old, tired, tedious and self-serving groups we have now. Then there is a citizens movement that is reminescent of the many social change movments of the 1960s. But now, thanks to the Internet, such movements can be more effective, dynamic and generative. They can actually create and deliver new ideas and express the citizen-based aspirations for the next Alberta.
We have to be up for all of these efforts, and more. But time is a-wastin' and times are a-changin'. Reboot Alberta is becoming a gathering place for Albertans who are not only mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but who may be ready to do something to change the world or at least Alberta's place in it. If this describes you, then I suggest you join the citizen's movement known as Reboot Alberta. Dust off your citizenship, park your cynicism, bring your best self and start to Press for Change about where Alberta is going and how we will get there.
Will we get a distilled report from a department perspective that is designed to be politically safe (a.k.a. bland and pointless). Or will the informed, articulate and engaged cats from the larger community have the pen and rule the day? If so, then I expect we be given a feast for thought and a call for further citizen engagement in public education. I will then anticipate some definite declarations of what ought to be our educational aspirations for Alberta moving forward..
Alberta's political culture is in turmoil and turbulent. It has retreated from good governance into a command and control topdown governing philsophy motivated by partisan political survival. Intimidation, coersion, pressure and threats from politicians, power brokers and even program managers against vulnerable citizens, community organizations, agencies and public service providers are becoming all too prevalent. It is more proof of the mounting evidence that our government, and many of our governing institutions, have lost their way; policy-wise, politically and morally.
In such a corrosive political culture we can expect meaningless double-speak and obfuscation if the government gets to politically frame the outcomes of an Inspiring Education report. On the other hand, if educators, Trustees and community members hold the pen, I hope for an expansive, inclusive, dynamic, comprehensive, generative warts-and-all aspirational and challenging report. I want to know from the report on the Inspiring Education process what our best minds think we need to do about the protecting and adpating public education in Alberta so our students are ready to face the future.
There are thousands of Albertans who know and care about the future of public education and many of them came together in the Inspiring Education process. We in Alberta, and Edmonton in particular, have a public education system that is the envy of the world. It has survived the attacks from those shallow thinkers who imposed simple minded "solutions" like competition and test standardization. That was no way to adapt a complex systems like public education to meet the changing world of the 21st century.
The open question going forward is will those Albertans who know and care about public education become engaged and rise to the political and public policy challenges ahead? In particular will they have the courage and character to rise to resist the partisan, self-preserving, politically motiviated challenges that are emerging and threatening to undermine and destroy public education in Alberta?
The great paradox of self-preserving political "leadership" is its tone deafness and ineptness for authentic communication with citizens. The problem, and the solution, is always seen by those who see their power and authority in decline, as a failure to communicate. When the citizens are way ahead of the politicians and the bureaucracy in understanding the problems, priorities, preferences and solutions the self-preserving politicians become paralyzed.
That is the cause of the real failure to effectively and authenticaly communicate. It is pretty much the political situation in Alberta today. It is not new. It was this way in the late 80's early 90's over debt and deficit. The Alberta population was way ahead of the political class on those issues. The communications broke down and the population expressed their displeasure. It eventually lead to the end of Don Getty's Premiership.
Polls tell us public confidence in the institutional powers-that-be and the political leadership in Alberta is now at, or approaching, an all time low. Systems are breaking down at a time when Alberta is poised to be one of the most compelling, renoun and quite possibly most celebrated places on the planet, thanks to the oilsands. All of this transformational possiblity can and will be squandered if Albertans don't get seriously re-engaged and reaffirm the rights and responsibilities of our citizenship.
We have to Reboot Alberta. We can do this by Progressive citizens taking Control back from the politicians, the media and the behind- the door power-brokers in the energy industry. We have to create Alternative 21st century institutions based on horizontal inclusive governance models that is citizen based and working in networked connected inclusive communities. We have to Delete concentrated political power that is centralized topdown command and control by reckless and feckless leadership supported by anemic and self-serving political parties.
How do we Progressives do it? There are a number of ways. One way is to take over the existing political institutions and change them from within. Another is to create new political institutions that can replace the old, tired, tedious and self-serving groups we have now. Then there is a citizens movement that is reminescent of the many social change movments of the 1960s. But now, thanks to the Internet, such movements can be more effective, dynamic and generative. They can actually create and deliver new ideas and express the citizen-based aspirations for the next Alberta.
We have to be up for all of these efforts, and more. But time is a-wastin' and times are a-changin'. Reboot Alberta is becoming a gathering place for Albertans who are not only mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but who may be ready to do something to change the world or at least Alberta's place in it. If this describes you, then I suggest you join the citizen's movement known as Reboot Alberta. Dust off your citizenship, park your cynicism, bring your best self and start to Press for Change about where Alberta is going and how we will get there.
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