I'll give an example of the sort of difficulties that we have with the CBE, as I think maybe concrete examples are useful: as a member of a parent council, we have certain fundraisers we conduct through the year. We're fortunate to be able to run a casino charity, which definitely accounts for the vast majority of our fundraising, but we don't like to be 100% dependent on that. So we run other events that serve as fundraisers. However, due to recent CBE changes, we now need to pay to use the school for our own events, even if these events are attempting to raise money for school activities. Which essentially means that we start any fundraising event a thousand dollars in the hole. This has required us to kill some fundraising events as they'd simply run a loss, and at least for the time-being, become solely reliant on our casino. If something were to happen that caused our casino to get cancelled (such as, *cough* a pandemic), that would effectively wipe out 18 months worth of programmed events for our kids (everything from swimming lessons to in-school residencies to field trips), as well other things we fund, such as new technology purchases, with no avenue to make up that funding.
The CBE is a difficult-enough bureaucracy that it's really difficult to elevate issues like this to get them resolved. It of course seems ridiculous to us that the CBE wants us to share in funding things like technology for the school, but actively works against us conducting fundraisers. Our teachers are great. Our principal is great. Our support staff is great. But dealing with anything at the CBE level feels just impossible.
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