Coddington Deborah: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15491] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I am sorry to disappoint Mr Donald but ACT will not be supporting this bill. It is rare that I find myself agreeing with Marian Hobbs but elections for school boards of trustees are not appropriate for single transferable vote (STV). They are not same as local body elections or health board elections. People do not stand for boards of trustees as a political statement. Marian Hobbs is right. She said parents stand up and say: “These are the skills that I think I have to offer.” They do not align themselves with any particular political party or even stand as an independent. Local body and district health board elections are often used as a staging post for people who want to go further on in politics. 
There are a lot of things wrong with school boards of trustees but the voting system is not one of them. One of the biggest problems is apathy. Some boards like to put a positive spin on it as they did when I was on the board of trustees for a very large girls school. We took it that the parents were pretty satisfied with what we were doing. Be that as it may there were 1800 to 2000 girls at that school and when we had a “meet the candidates” meeting just 12 parents turned up. So whether one has a small school or a big school there is still a problem with parents putting their names forward and being involved in the board of trustees. At Epsom Girls Grammar School which was in a very tightly zoned area the only time we had packed halls was when we announced that we might be thinking of changing the uniform or changing the zoning. It was interesting that the people who turned up to the zoning meeting were those whose children went to King’s College St Cuthbert’s or Diocesan School for Girls and were very worried that their property prices might drop if they were suddenly zoned out of the tight zoning area. 
The problem with apathy is often that parents do not feel that they have too much say in what goes on in the school. They think that by being on the board of trustees they will have some say in the governance or the curriculum but increasingly that is not the case. They find that they have to comply with all the regulations and edicts that come out of the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office and with a number of Acts the Occupational Safety and Health Service and the Holidays Act. All of these things keep them away from the reason they decided to stand for the board of trustees in the first place. So they get disillusioned with their role as a parent representative. 
Marian Hobbs also pointed out that boards of trustees have the power to co-opt other parents on to the board if they do not have fair representation. In fact if there is not Maori representation on the board then they are required to have a Maori representative or consultant in the school’s community who can contribute. Boards and schools go out of their way to co-opt other parents and other members of the community who will provide that balance. There will very rarely be enough people standing for a board of trustees for an STV voting system to proceed smoothly. Other members have stood up today and said they support STV. I do not even support MMP. I would vote against it tomorrow even though it would put me out of Parliament. Contrary to what people say it does not increase democracy. All MMP does is increase the number of backroomdeals that are done so people can stay in power or in support of the Government. 
The other big problem with boards of trustees is that they are under threat. The Minister has commissioned research that shows the optimum is one board of trustees for 200 schools—ram all the schools together and have as little parent representation and as little parent involvement as possible. The last thing that this Government ever wants to do is to give power back to parents and give parents the right to choose.