Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of “open government,” but while Taipei Department of Education Commissioner Tang Chih-min (湯志民) supports Ko’s policy in public, he has been acting the opposite behind the scenes.
A meeting was held on March 31 to explain a plan to close down Zhongyi Elementary School in the Zhongzheng District (中正) as part of a government-run urban renewal project for the Southern Airdrome public housing complex.
Department of Education officials told the meeting that an evaluation process for merging the school with others would be conducted, adding that a re-evaluation, including liaison meetings, would be completed by the end of this month, and that it would be reviewed by a merger committee before the end of next month.
The department said that it would inform the families that would be affected by the proposal so they could attend the meetings and state their opinions, and that it would hold a public meeting if there was a need for one.
It also said that the plan would be submitted to an education review committee by the end of July.
However, over the next 10 days, the department did all it could to speed the merger process along, skipping all the required procedures. It completely ignored procedural justice.
On Tuesday last week, the department suddenly announced that it would hold a school district adjustment meeting the following day. At that meeting, the department said that Zhongyi Elementary School would be shut and its teachers and students distributed among five nearby schools: Taipei Mandarin Experimental, Xinhe, Shuangyuan, Xiyuan and Ying-Qiao. Another alternative was to send most of Zhongyi’s staff and students to just two of those schools.
Media reports about the department’s proposals created a backlash and triggered questions about why proper procedure for school mergers had not been followed. The authorities then said they had put the plan on hold.
On Wednesday afternoon last week, the department secretly informed non-governmental members of the merger committee that a second meeting would be held the following afternoon. However, department officials, including Chief Secretary Chen Shun-he (陳順和) and Primary Education Division head Lee Hui-ming (李慧銘), told reporters that no such meeting was scheduled.
Not daring to hold the meeting openly in Taipei City Hall, the department sneakily changed the venue to Xinyi Elementary School. When some uninvited people turned up, a surprised Lee said: “How did you know I was here?”
Lee brazenly refused to let reporters into the meeting. Zhongyi Elementary School parents’ association head Wang Yu-tian (王育添) was also excluded.
Article 6 of the bylaw governing mergers between elementary schools in Taipei states that when a meeting about school mergers is held, the principals, teachers and parents’ associations of all schools involved must be informed so that they can attend and state their opinions, and that the details of the meeting must be clearly listed in a notification letter.
By not doing so in the Zhongyi case, the department is in clear breach of the law. There could hardly be a more blatant example of bureaucratic maneuvering behind closed doors.
Answering reporters’ questions a little while later, Ko said the meeting at the Xinyi school had been held to discuss school mergers in Taipei, rather than just the Zhongyi school, and questioned the need for authorities to inform reporters about it.
However, the first item on the agenda was the proposed closure of Zhongyi Elementary School, not an unconnected matter.
There are about 10 elementary schools in Taipei that are facing closure or mergers. All records of meetings that form part of the merger procedure should be published on the Internet, along with materials related to schools’ self-evaluations.
Under a system of transparent government, information should be made available promptly.
If information is not made public until after things have gone wrong, it can only serve the purpose of finding out who should take the blame, and that is not its proper purpose.
Lin Chia-yu is co-chair of the Trees Party.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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