2 Friday, August 3, 2018 brooklintowncrier.com Each municipal tax year, my household shovels over $600 into the local school board coffers. What they do with my cash - and yours, by the way - has always seemed a mystery. That's my own fault. I've never paid it much heed. Like many others I'm sure, I just pay my taxes and assume that duly qualified and/or elected people won't spend it frivolously. Which brings me to another mystery: school board trustees. I'd long had a tainted view of their roles. One trustee I knew in Ottawa seemed to appear at every school function where food and drink were available. Rumour had it he spent his days traveling to his area's schools to collect the mileage. Visible? Oh yes. Functional? I don't know. Of course, when municipal elections came around, who really knew much about the trustee candidates unless you worked in a school board? As a result, most were acclaimed, relying on little more than name recognition since few voters took the time to learn about them. School boards play with massive budgets and a key role of trustees is to oversee how that money - mine, yours - is spent not just overall but for your local school. Will there be enough to repair leaky roofs, build a new wing, buy playground equipment or re-sod the playing fields? One Ottawa-area trustee says, "It is important to know...what will be the Board priorities for the coming school year. They perform a checks and balance to the process. Each trustee has input to the spending and it is here that they can determine and influence how a school in your community receives appropriate funding and staffing to meet the needs of the students. "If one takes the role seriously, it can be quite time consuming as the expectation is that you will attend functions and social events sponsored by the schools within your jurisdiction." Indeed, trustees receive honouraria. For instance, Durham District Catholic board trustees receive The mystery of trustees Less than Half the Picture By Richard Bercuson continued on next page