Seven school boards stripped of power — and an eighth likely — in the past nine months alone.
Never before has the government taken over so many boards, including the two largest in the province, and the move has left families and observers wondering what’s next.
Some say Education Minister Paul Calandra is laying the groundwork for a system without elected trustees, and this is a trial run for a new governance model. Others believe he’s gone overboard in trying to control school boards.
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His reasons for seizing control are typically financial — multi-year deficits, questionable budget decisions — though boards argue the main issue is years of underfunding.
But more recently, with additional powers granted to him under new legislation, Calandra has also stepped in or threatened to because of dysfunctional or incompetent leadership — which in one case saw students in Parry Sound learning in a half-demolished building — and, in the Peel public board, in part to prevent imminent teacher layoffs (a claim trustee David Green and others dispute).
Late last week, the York Catholic board submitted a letter to Calandra with its bid to avoid supervision, which the education minister threatened because of trustee infighting and overall ignorance of their roles and responsibilities — plus mounting legal fees as they battled each other in court, costing the public more than $320,000 — along with other financial concerns.
(Calandra is set to rule as early as this week whether to send in a supervisor.)
In an interview, Calandra said what’s happening with boards is not a test run, but “immediate intervention” that’s needed when students and learning are impacted.
“I suppose the easier thing to do, frankly, is just let it continue on the way it’s going — I’ve said right from the beginning, where we avoid responsibility for decision-making, that has to come to an end,” Calandra said. “The ministry has to step up — we have to step up to be able to provide a more consistent level of education across the province.”
But critics see it differently. New Democrat education critic Chandra Pasma said “every time he takes a board under supervision, he gets to do a media tour saying ‘well, the trustees were incompetent. That’s why I had to do it.’
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“And board by board, he keeps repeating that narrative, and by the time he takes the next step of getting rid of elected boards altogether, he’s created this public perception that they had to go because they were not only outdated, but incompetent.”
With the Toronto public and Catholic, Peel public and Dufferin-Peel Catholic, Ottawa public, Thames Valley public and the Near North board now being run by a supervisor, that covers about one-third of all students in the province.
“Supervision should always be a last resort,” said Kathleen Woodcock, who heads the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, adding trustees want to work with the government and “all education partners to innovate, modernize, and strengthen Ontario’s publicly funded education system, but it is getting more and more difficult to do so with each passing week as classroom-level decisions continue to be made at Queen’s Park without local input.”
With widespread governance reforms on the horizon, Calandra reiterated that “school boards are still going to be in existence — but they all have to know what the expectation is, and the behaviour that we expect, regardless of what the governance model is.”
He wants more “clear, concise decision-making — decisions that put kids first. I want less conflict within the system and more focus on results and achievement and how the heck we get there.” He said when boards “fall off the rails, it’s so harmful to kids.”
What does the education minister want boards to do
Case in point, he added, is the Near North board, where construction delays and poor communication meant Parry Sound students didn’t start classes in a brand-new building last fall as planned, forcing some to learn online for two weeks and others to take classes in a half-demolished school.
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“It’s kind of gross — we can’t allow this to happen,” he said. “I’ve never hidden the fact that it is my intention to step in when boards fall off the rails. It’s not a trial run for me in any way, shape or form — it really isn’t. These boards need immediate intervention to make sure they’re on the right path.”
Trustees in the seven boards have been shut out — save for Catholic boards, where they still have a say in denominational issues. In January, five of the supervised boards opened parent support offices.
The supervisor in Toronto has made some popular decisions — including reinstating a beloved principal at an arts high school after parent outrage and ending a controversial lottery system for specialty programs — but also controversial ones, such as removing class caps in grades 4 to 8 (though keeping an overall average of 24.5). In Ottawa, the supervisor put an end to an unpopular elementary school restructuring plan the board had been planning that would have changed school boundaries and uprooted thousands of kids.
But many frustrations remain, including why supervisors are needed — with $360,000 salaries — and complaints about less communication than when trustees were in charge.
“I know that the supervisor meets regularly with the province, and I’m smart enough to know that they are driving the bus,” said Ottawa parent Sarah Boardman. “He was brought in to address financial mismanagement; multiple independent audits found none.
“This was a control move by the province from the start.”
Alyson King, a political science professor at Ontario Tech University, said families expect to see the supervisors make a difference.
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“They’re saying the words, but are they actually doing the actions that make them improve the lives of teachers?” she said. “We know that the resources going into the classrooms have not really increased, and the teachers themselves are under increasing stress with all the needs that students have.”
Budget troubles ahead
The toughest work has yet to happen, with most of the boards running deficits and spending more in areas than they receive from the government, and the supervisors expected to get boards to balanced budgets when things like school pools or daytime international language instruction are popular, but unfunded.
Supervisors are likely to close schools or sell off buildings to help balance the books, something boards themselves had asked permission to do.
“There is growing concern that these takeovers are part of a broader plan to seize control of school board finances and real estate across the province,” said David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
He said that in the past, supervision has not made much difference in boards’ financial situations in the end, and what the government is doing “follows the same failed playbook Ontario has seen before.”
In Ottawa, supervisor Bob Plamondon sent a letter to parents saying he’s determined the deficit to be $11.5 million, but that “my objective is to find efficiencies within the system and reinvest some savings directly into student learning,” including more educational assistants in classrooms.
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He wants to spend “less on solar panels without a clear financial return and more on classroom air conditioning and improving water quality in rural schools,” he wrote, adding he’s also “asked staff to move quickly to divest unused facilities.”
Calandra said supervisors were directed that “if our funding formula isn’t meeting the needs, then you’ve got to tell me and we’ll look at that … but we’ve also said to them, the goal is to put more money back in the classroom.”
He also said it’s time for the province to take over certain responsibilities, such as cybersecurity, in the wake of massive privacy breaches in a number of boards.
Communication issues
Parent involvement advisory committee co-chair Katrina Matheson said while still early, communications with the supervisor in the Toronto public board have improved and he has been providing updates and taking their questions.
“From our side, we see him as a co-operative partner so far, and we’re looking forward to more collaboration in the future,” she said.
But David Lepofsky, who heads the public board’s special education advisory committee, said it should have been advised of an “adverse” decision to increase the size of two types of special education classes.
Before the government considers doing away with public trustees, another union official, who has been critical of the elected officials in his board, said it could look to provide better training or ensure they have resumés with skills the boards need.
“Why such a drastic step?” said Mike Totten, head of the Catholic teachers union in York Region. “I think there are ways to make it better.”
