Education Minister Paul Calandra had been signalling that he was going to take over the board.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
The Ontario government has taken over another school board, bringing the total number of boards placed under supervision this year to six.
Monday’s announcement that the province is taking over the Near North District School Board is the first under expanded powers the Minister of Education now has under a controversial bill that passed just two weeks ago.
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra had been signalling that he was going to take over the board, which includes the communities of Parry Sound, North Bay and Mattawa. Last week he told reporters at Queen’s Park it would take a holiday “miracle” to avert a takeover.
The board has been under fire for months due to delays in building a new K-12 school.
“I owe it to the community to make sure that we take some steps, initially, to get things back on track,” Mr. Calandra said Monday.
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The ministry had ordered a review of the board in response to the delays.
“Under the current leadership of the board of trustees and the director of education, I do not see a viable path forward in which this school board is governing and leading in a manner that restores public trust and confidence,” reviewer Rachel Osborne wrote.
High school students in the Near North district had to begin this school year doing remote learning and are now attending class in the building that was in the process of being torn down, while hundreds of elementary school students were sent to another school.
Under Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, the Education Minister now has the power to take over school boards whenever doing so is deemed to be in the public interest. Prior to Bill 33, the government could only put a board under supervision for financial mismanagement.
Five other school boards have already been placed under supervision this year.
The Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and the Thames Valley District School Board were all placed under supervision after investigations found financial mismanagement at each board.
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Citing the ministry review of the Near North District School Board, which found that the school board was divided, inexperienced and unwilling or unable to carry out its responsibilities, among other things, Mr. Calandra said the board is a perfect example of why the bill is necessary.
“They are the poster child of why we brought Bill 33 forward and we’re going to bring back stability to this community,” he said.
After the report, Mr. Calandra ordered the board to comply with 15 binding directives, many of them to be completed in the brief span of five to 15 days.
The board’s failure to comply with them all led to the decision to place the board under supervision.
Amy Black, a mother in Parry Sound, helped create the group Parents for Parry Sound earlier this year to advocate for the timely completion of the new school.
The Minister’s decision to put the board under supervision was necessary, she said.
“Parents for Parry Sound would love to see a fresh set of eyes come into that board and turn things around because it’s been dysfunctional for years,” she said.
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Ashley St. Pierre, the Indigenous trustee at the board, said supervision risks silencing Indigenous students who may be experiencing problems at school.
“My concern is that their voices won’t be considered or heard,” she said.
Kathleen Woodcock, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said supervision should always be a “last resort.”
“When it happens, there should be a clear, publicly communicated plan outlining expectations for everyone involved, including a transparent path back to full local governance,” she said in an e-mailed statement to The Globe and Mail.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said parents and community members have been raising concerns about some of the board’s decisions for some time, and that putting it under supervision “might have been called for.”
But she questioned whether Mr. Calandra can adequately represent the region.
“Will the Minister of Education be answering their calls? Is the Minister of Education, sitting here in Toronto, going to be following up directly with them? Once again, people in the north have to rely on their questions to be answered by some minister in an office down here in downtown Toronto, instead of getting the answers they need right there in their community,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park.
Liberal MPP John Fraser, the party’s education critic, said the minister has not addressed safety concerns in schools, lowered class sizes or adequately funded special education, leading to a crisis in schools.
“All he wants to do out of these board takeovers is point the finger and go, ‘They’re the bad people.’”
Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner suggested Mr. Calandra, whom he accused of underfunding education, is not the right choice to oversee the board: “Like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Jay Aspin, who had previously been on board for 22 years and returned to it as chair in August, said the time frame to comply with the binding directives was “not impossible, just challenging.”
But he did not dispute the report’s findings, and said he was not surprised by the Minister’s decision.
“There’s no doubt the board was in trouble,” he said.