The Ontario government this year announced it would take over four school boards, a move that critics say could mean parents will have less input in their children’s education.Kate Dockeray/The Globe and Mail
Jennifer Volk has two children in high school in Toronto this year, and while she is not worried about their academic performance, she does have one major concern about their schooling.
This past June, the Ontario government announced it would take over four school boards, following several other provinces that have already eliminated elected trustees who acted as a layer between schools, parents and education ministries.
With the Toronto District School Board now under supervision, Ms. Volk is worried about the effect this shift will have on her community and others across the city.
For now, elected trustees have been relieved of their duties, and that means a vital connection between school boards and communities has been severed, says Ms. Volk.
Jennifer Volk is worried about the effect that eliminating school trustees could have on the community.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
Trustees not only help parents with individual problems but have a deep understanding of the communities they represent and advocate on their behalf, she says.
“The needs in all the communities of all those trustees are very different,” says Ms. Volk.
For example, there are no community pools in her neighbourhood and so her children were only able to learn to swim in pools that are in schools. This past spring, the TDSB proposed to close school pools to help balance the budget. Trustees were instrumental in keeping them open so that families such as hers could continue to benefit from them, she says.
In June, the province appointed supervisors to oversee the finances and operations of the TDSB, Toronto Catholic District School Board, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board after years of deficits that trustees say were a result of underfunding and other measures that hamper their ability to manage their finances, such as a moratorium on closing underutilized schools and selling the properties.
Investigations into each of the boards ordered by the province did not find evidence of serious financial mismanagement, but all had accumulated deficits, which, under the Education Act, allows the ministry to take over control.
Earlier in the year, the province also placed the Thames Valley District School Board under supervision.
The trustees at all five boards under supervision have been relieved of their duties.
The province’s decisions regarding governance of the boards and whether trustees will be fully reinstated will be announced by the end of the year, though the supervisors overseeing each board will be in charge for as long as it takes to balance budgets and “ensure long-term sustainability,” Education Minister Paul Calandra has said.
“I know the easiest thing for an elected official to say is that everything is on the table. But it really is,” Mr. Calandra said in an interview. “I want to hear not only from the areas where the supervisors are in place but from all across the province – does the model that we currently have effectively allow for governance of our school boards?”
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has said that the supervisors overseeing each board will be in charge for as long as they are needed.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Several provinces have gotten rid of school boards or elected trustees, or at least tried to do so in recent years.
In Nova Scotia, elected trustees at English school boards were eliminated in 2018. The current provincial government has promised to reinstate them, but has not yet done so. Manitoba had to scrap its plan to eliminate its school boards in 2021 after opposition from parents. Newfoundland and Labrador replaced elected trustees at English-language school boards with appointed trustees in 2013. Prince Edward Island eliminated elected trustees in 2012, then reinstated them in 2022 in response to calls from the public to have community trustees advocating on their behalf.
Critics fear that if the Ontario eliminates trustees, who are elected every four years in municipal and school board elections to oversee annual budgets and often help parents with various issues, the democratic process will be stifled, parents will lack input in their children’s education and communities’ concerns will be ignored.
With school only a month in, there has been little concerted opposition from parents. But as parent councils begin to meet and the school year progresses, parents will begin to understand what it means to not have access to trustees, says Alan Campbell, president of the Canadian School Boards Association.
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Eliminating elected trustees changes the way schools are run, says Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa, who studied the fallout in Nova Scotia after trustees were eliminated.
“Things become more centralized, which, depending on your view, can be a good or bad thing,” he says. But boards “do become less responsive to members of the community.”
Parent councils and community groups can be especially stymied, Prof. Maharaj says. “They have much less input and much less of a voice as a result, because there’s no local person or public process to kind of facilitate feedback,” he says.
Gerald Galway, a professor of education at Memorial University in St. John’s, says that trustees’ community ties put them in a unique position to help constituents. “Being elected and being out there in the community, they do have that connection with the public, and it’s an important connection. In their ideal form school boards should be democratically elected people, trustees who embody community values.”
Christopher Katsarov/For The Globe and Mail
When Suzy Hansen was removed as a school trustee in Nova Scotia, she had many misgivings, not least of which was the effect on parents in her community.
“It made it harder and harder for parents to voice their concerns about what was going on in their particular schools,” says Hansen, who was removed in 2018 and now serves in the provincial legislature.
In Ontario, up until 1998, school boards had the power to raise money through local property taxes. Now, more than 90 per cent of a board’s operating revenue comes from the province, with the rest coming from renting excess school space, grants from the federal government, fees such as tuition from international students and other provincial grants.
The Ontario Public School Boards Association estimates that this school year, per-student funding will be $404 below 2018-2019 levels when adjusted for inflation.
Data compiled by the association shows that 25 of Ontario’s 72 school boards have projected a deficit for this school year.
Toronto District School Board chair Neethan Shan says that widespread deficits at school boards throughout Ontario are proof of structural issues, not trustee mismanagement.
“It’s not a TDSB story. It is a story across the province, because the province has reduced its share of funding,” he says.
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The province has invested $30.3-billion in core education for this school year, up from $28.6-billion for the 2024-2025 school year.
Mr. Calandra says he is open to looking at whether or not the funding formula currently in place disadvantages the boards under supervision more than others that are able to balance their budgets.
The Education Minister is also considering lifting the school closure moratorium, which prevents boards from consolidating schools that are facing declining enrolments.
The province’s investigation into the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board found enrolment down 12 per cent over the past seven years, resulting in 17,831 “underutilized pupil places.”
Meanwhile, at Ottawa-Carleton District School Board the investigation estimated the moratorium cost the board $20.8-million in the 2024-25 school year, a result of having to pay for things such as heating, cooling and maintaining underutilized schools. The board’s deficit that year was $9.2-million.
Dan MacLean, a TDSB trustee who spoke to The Globe and Mail before the board was put under supervision, estimates the board would save just under $600,000 a year on average in operational costs for each school the board could consolidate.
Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, whose government introduced the moratorium in 2017, says it was never intended as a permanent measure. “They have just politically decided they’re going to pretend that school boards never need to close schools,” she said.
Eliminating trustees may not only sever an important tie to the communities they serve, but it could also make it harder for those communities to have input on their children’s education.
Ms. Volk worries if that happens, trustees will likely never return.
“Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that if it’s gone I don’t know if you ever get it back.”