The English Montreal School Board (EMSB, French: Commission scolaire English-Montréal – CSEM) is one of five public school boards on the island of Montreal.
At 92.4 percent, the English Montreal School Board has the highest rate of students who earn a high school diploma among all public school boards in Quebec. This success rate is considerably higher than the provincewide average of 81.8 percent, and is only slightly lower than the 92.9 percent success rate for private schools.[3]
The EMSB is one of two English-language school boards on the island of Montreal. Its territory consists of 14 of the 19 boroughs of the city of Montreal (Anjou, Montréal-Nord, Outremont, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Léonard, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Sud-Ouest, Ville-Marie, Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension, Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles) as well as the municipalities of Côte-Saint-Luc, Hampstead, Mont-Royal, Montréal-Est, Montréal-Ouest and Westmount.[4] English-language public education in the western portion of Montreal Island is administered by the Lester B. Pearson School Board.
The Director General of the EMSB is Nick Katalifos,[5] who is the school board's chief administrative officer.
Structurally, the EMSB has two Assistant Director Generals: Jack H. Chadirdjian and Pela Nickoletopoulos. The school board also has three regional directors, who have independent responsibility for oversight of the elementary schools (Demetrios Giannacopoulos), high schools (Nathalie Lacroix-Maillette) and adult education and vocational centres (Angela Spagnolo). The school board also has a secretary-general (Me Nathalie Lauzière), who has a key role in the board's functioning. [6]
The Government of Quebec reorganized the province's public school boards in the mid-1990s. School boards in Quebec had been organized along religious confessional lines, Catholic and Protestant, since before Canadian Confederation. The province of Quebec was guaranteed a confessional public school system by the British North America Act, 1867, now known as the Constitution Act, 1867. The provincial government was required to ask the federal government to amend the Canadian Constitution if it were to reorganize school boards along linguistic lines (English and French). The amendment was passed by both the House of Commons and the Senate, notwithstanding the unresolved constitutional debate between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
The political infighting among the board's commissioners has received significant coverage in Montreal's English-language media, most notably the Montreal Gazette. This competition, for the most part, had previously pitted Catholics vs. Protestants. That division has recently become much less significant, however. But the harmonization of the previous boards' administrative policies and the debate over school closings due to declining enrollment have been especially inflammatory. In 2005, both the Montreal Gazette and the French-language tabloid Le Journal de Montréal printed a special series of articles denouncing alleged nepotism and graft in the province's public school boards. The Gazette's investigation focused almost exclusively on the hiring practices of the English Montreal School Board.
Enrollment in the English Montreal School Board's schools and centres continues to decline as it does in most English-language public school boards in Quebec. This is a part of an ongoing decline following the enactment of the Charter of the French Language by the Québec government In 1977.[11][12]
Since the EMSB's creation in 1998, the board has closed 21 schools, most recently 2 elementary schools and 1 high school in 2020. The School Board's chairperson attributes the declining enrolment to Bill 101, families moving to cities with lower home taxes, such as Laval; and the general decline in birth rates.[13]
The EMSB had the highest voter turnout among all school boards in Quebec, with 18%.[14]
In 2019, the EMSB said it would not enforce Bill 21, the Government of Quebec's proposed ban of public servants wearing religious symbols, stating that the board has never received a complaint from a parent or student about a teacher's religious symbol.[15]
Political stands
The EMSB deployed efforts to persuade federal government to challenge the legality of Quebec CAQ government's 2021 Bill 96 for a ruling to the Supreme Court.[16]
This school board oversees 33 elementary schools, 16 secondary schools, 8 outreach schools, 7 social affairs institutions and 12 adult and vocational centres, in which over 44,000 students are enrolled.
