Ontario school board bills taxpayers $32,000 to send three staff to Hawaii conference
Access to information documents showed the Lambton Kent District School Board sent three staffers to attend a conference at a Hawaiian resort. “There was no question that the quality of the conference met the needs of attendees,” LKDSB education director John Howitt said.
An Ontario school board is under fire after three staffers spent more than $32,000 attending a conference in Hawaii.
An access to information request revealed three staffers from the Lambton Kent District School Board (LKDSB) travelled to the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Resort in Honolulu for a total cost of $32,190.79, reports CBC.
The attendees, frontline staffers who were part of the LKDSB's Indigenous Education Team, paid nearly $2,200 for admittance to the conference. Hotel rates for one of the attendees exceeded $1,110 USD per night, while another paid $743 — a sharp increase from the $334 per night the conference is charging for its upcoming 2025 event.
“We were not able to get the conference rate for rooms for all of the attendees, and that is why there is the extra expense,” said LKDSB education director John Howitt. The trip was approved by senior administration officials and backed by the Indigenous Liaison Committee.
“It was a significant discussion at the senior executive level about whether or not to commit to the conference approval, because of the location,” Howitt added.
“There was no question that the quality of the conference met the needs of attendees … we also reviewed whether or not the same needs could be met at another conference that was not in this location, and we could not find anything.”
The early January 2024 conference was not specifically focused on Indigenous education; rather, it covered a broad range of subjects.
As reported by CBC:
A program outline for the 2024 conference includes one 90-minute session on Indigenous language revitalization and two that included land-based learning. The conference's keynote speaker, Roberta Ku'ulei Keakealani, also spoke about endangered language and generational storytelling.
Other fees taxpayers were forced to burden included nearly $5,300 in flight costs.
“Even though the location was something that we wouldn't normally approve, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation … we were convinced that the quality of the programming was there,” Howitt said, the state broadcaster reported.
Edyta McKay, spokesperson for Education Minister Jill Dunlop, cautioned the provincial government would examine school board expenses.
“We will be examining discretionary expenses across the board,” she told CBC in a statement. “We expect every school board to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars that prioritizes student achievement, whether in a deficit or surplus situation.”
The education ministry recently announced a financial investigation into Thames Valley District School Board, a board in the London area, after administrators spent $40,000 on a trip to Toronto.
“We trusted that the learnings would be used back in our system — which they are already being implemented in our system,” Howitt said, defending the decision. “So, not everybody in the board would see that professional development directly; it is targeted to those providing Indigenous programming.”
COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2024-11-11 20:00:37 -0500I suppose they think Zoom is only for poor people. And think of how many things that money could have purchased for students.
