A new set of priorities is emerging: put students first, remove them from the Department of Education and school district agendas, and listen more to parents and teachers in schools. The centralized and overly bureaucratic school system is described in my new book, System Status: A Survey of Canadian Schools, which was found to be vulnerable and ill-equipped to respond to the huge disruption caused by the VIDEO 19 pandemic. This has resulted in what Gert Beista called “learning ability,” a new language of instruction in which students “learn,” the classroom “facilitates learning,” and the classroom is a “learning environment. “The technocratic language now promulgated by ministries of education and faculties of education threatens to undermine the very purpose of education: to learn something, to learn something for a reason, to learn something from someone else. We need a complete review of the school administration and a commitment to removing barriers to creating a more flexible, responsive, and self-sufficient school community that puts the needs of students first. Everyone, from school directors to students, teachers, and parents, reflects on the consequences of school closures, the six-month break, and the difficult start of the school year in September, reflecting on previous assumptions and what once seemed unlikely. This is only the first phase of a comprehensive strategy to make our schools more democratic, responsive, and accountable to parents, teachers, students, and communities. If education is to be based on evidence-based practices and what works for students in the classroom, the education guru and the sector of school improvement must be challenged. We will need leaders who will come “out of the box” to transform our schools into more autonomous social institutions that serve students, families and communities in the first place. Since the resumption of school activities in September, the devastating effects of the vast experience of distance learning, compounded by fears and concerns about the health risks posed by IED-19, have destabilized the entire school system. We need a completely different model: a family-centered approach that includes a philosophy of “compassion” with parents and fully supports active family participation in the school community. In order to restore the broken and damaged school system, we need to address the vulnerability and limitations of K-12 bureaucratic education “from top to bottom. We have seen how students, teachers, and families depend on provincial and district school policies. There is also growing evidence that schools need to be more responsive to changes in the health status and preferences of students and families. In our schools, students must come first, and this is best done in small schools that work at the human and student level.