Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal (PSBGM, French: Commission des écoles protestantes du Grand Montréal, CEPGM) was a Protestant and predominantly English-language school district in Montreal, Quebec, Canada which was founded in 1951 as a replacement for the Montreal Protestant Central Board, and ceased operations in 1998, with most of its assets transferred to the new English Montreal School Board. Quebec's Protestant school boards served all non-Catholics, so that the city's Jewish students generally attended schools operated by the PSBGM. The PSBGM's headquarters was located at 6000 Fielding Avenue in Montreal, which is now the headquarters for the English Montreal School Board.
Contents
Schools operated
This partial list includes some schools that are still in operation and others that have closed or been put to other uses.
Elementary schools
High schools
History
The Government of Quebec reorganized the province's public school boards in the mid-1990s. School boards in Quebec had been organized along confessional lines, Catholic and Protestant, since before Canadian Confederation. In fact, 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 therefore 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 without much debate by both the House of Commons and the Senate, notwithstanding the unresolved constitutional debate between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Debra Shapiro-Lambersky, then a student of the district, designed the district's 150th anniversary logo. The PSBGM held the 1996 PSBGM 150th Anniversary Logo Contest. Shapiro-Lambersky, then a 6th grade student at the Willingdon School, designed the winning logo, showing a group of books surrounding a red heart.
English Montreal School Board and the other new linguistic school boards began operations on July 1, 1998. The English sector of the PSBGM and the English sectors of the Montreal Catholic School Commission, the Commission scolaire Jérôme-Le Royer and the Commission scolaire Sainte-Croix were amalgamated to form the EMSB. The French-language sector became a part of the Commission scolaire de Montréal.
Labour relations
The board's teachers were represented by the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers, a union and professional association which later merged with the its English-language Catholic counterpart, the Provincial Association of Catholic Teachers, to form the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers.
Leadership
School board members were originally appointed, but this gave way to elections, originally restricted to property-owners.