Who should be running our schools? The attempts to answer that question have resulted in a perpetual tug-of-war between provincial governments and ministries of education on one end and school boards, trustees and parents on the other.

In New Brunswick, the Liberal government abolished school boards altogether in 1996, deciding instead to govern the province's schools from Fredericton. Although the government set up a system of local parent-run groups to replace the boards, many parents saw this as an empty gesture.

When the parent groups tried to effect change in the education system – to keep a French immersion program going or to keep a school open – they found that all the real power was in the provincial government.

In some cases there was literally rioting in the streets. Parents in Saint-Saveur and Saint-Simon set up blockades to keep local schools from being closed. RCMP riot squads used tear gas to break up the protests.

The elimination of school boards became known as the New Brunswick experiment and, although it was wildly unpopular with the province's residents, similar policies were adopted in other provinces.

In Alberta, the government removed the school boards' ability to raise money through direct taxes in 1995. Instead, the government would hand out the money based on a per-student funding allotment. The 1995 law also cut nearly two-thirds of the province's school boards and centralized some control over education in the government.

The Alberta government said the purpose of the changes was not only to cut costs, but also to address the hierarchy of richer and poorer schools that had developed.

The Klein government also set up parental school councils that would make the day-to-day decisions, but had little power. The councils were originally dismissed as mouthpieces of the government but, by 1997, the parental councils were joining Alberta teachers in demanding more money for education from the province.

The Alberta school boards took the government all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to fight the loss of taxation revenue. In 2000, the court sided with the Alberta government, saying the school boards did not have a constitutional right to autonomy and the province could reform its education system as it saw fit.

The decision reinforced the school boards' fears that their powers were being eroded. Through the 1990s, the number of school boards in Canadian provinces went from 815 to 490.

The Harris government in Ontario echoed many of Alberta's reforms in education. In the late 1990s, the government passed laws removing the school boards' right to local taxation and reducing the number of school boards.

The province established a complex funding formula to determine how much money each school board would get. The boards complained that the formula was flawed and didn't provide enough money for supplementary services, such as maintenance and school administration.

In the summer of 2002, three Ontario school boards – in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto – defied a law requiring the boards to pass balanced budgets. The Ontario government responded by taking over the boards and appointing their own supervisors.

The government does not always impose the reduction in the number of school boards. In Saskatchewan, school boards themselves voluntarily agreed to amalgamate. Twenty school boards, some of which were serving as few as 600 students, merged into eight in 1997.

In 2000, the newly elected Tory government in New Brunswick re-established school boards in the form of District Education Councils. Local elections for the new councils took place in the spring of 2001.

Recently, British Columbia took a different tack. It decentralized power over public education to the boards and gave them the ability to generate revenue by setting up offshore high schools and for-profit businesses such as print shops.

The B.C. government still holds the purse strings, though, and has recently frozen funding for education for the next three years. The government also passed a law that declared teachers an "essential service," removing their right to strike. Teachers have staged a one-day walk-out and have refused to participate in extra-curricular activities since then.