Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra says the government will be introducing “significant” legislation on school board governance on April 13.
“I’ll be introducing legislation on Monday,” Calandra told reporters at a news conference Friday.
He said he knows people are feeling “anxious” about possible changes and he wants to provide certainty.
“Monday is the next step in how we ensure that our education system is focused on students, parents and supporting teachers and delivering a quality education,” Calandra said.
Eight Ontario school boards are currently under provincially-appointed supervisors, with elected trustees suspended from their jobs.
The province has indicated that significant changes are coming to school board governance and Premier Doug Ford has refused to say whether elected trustees will be on the ballot in municipal elections in October.
While Calandra did not give specific details about what will be in the legislation, he indicated that more direct control will revert to the ministry.
“For 50 years, the Ministry of Education has felt that the best way to deal with things is to download to school boards that don’t have the ability or the capacity to deal with problems,” he said. “Monday is about bringing back that level of responsibility and leadership through the Ministry of Education.”
He made the comment while answering a question about violence in schools and said teachers should not have to deal with fights or weapons and bringing responsibility back to the ministry would help ensure “schools are safe.”
Critics concerned about representation
In the fall, the government passed legislation allowing the education minister to more easily seize control of school boards under a broader range of circumstances.
The suspended boards include the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Peel District School Board (PDSB) and Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) – some of the largest school boards in the country.
Calandra suspended the trustees, citing a range of issues, including financial mismanagement, infighting and wasteful spending. He has also said the boards have a tendency to go outside their mandate, straying from a focus on student achievement.
Education advocates and critics have expressed concern that the changes take away parent input and make it easier for some students – particularly students with special needs – to fall through the cracks, with no elected representatives able to help advocate for them within the system.
Opposition parties have also pointed out that elected trustees have been replaced with hand-picked supervisors, earning as much as $350,000 a year, with no educational background.
Recently, parents and teachers have been taken aback by several surprise cuts made by supervisors – changes that normally would have been debated in open school board meetings with trustees. Those changes include a cut to international language and literacy programs at the TCDSB and a cut to fulltime teaching positions at the TDSB, particularly at model schools supporting disadvantaged communities.
