Wanderings – What is going on in education?

What is going on in Ontario’s education system? A lot, and anyone with kids in elementary or secondary schools in Ontario should be concerned about them.

There is a clash that is slowly developing between the school boards and the ministry that oversees it. This clash will likely lead to reform of how school boards and the ministry operate our public education system, and not in a way many would like.

Recently, the Ministry of Education stepped in. appointing supervisors for a few school boards in the province. The most notable of these are the Thames Valley DSB in London and the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic DSB centred around Brantford. In both cases, there were questionable financial choices made by those boards. TVDSB sent senior administrators to a three-day retreat in Toronto, staying at the former Skydome hotel which cost a lot of money; while BHNCDSB sent trustees to Italy to buy art for newly built schools. This also cost a lot of money and was an unnecessary cost that took money away from classroom learning.

In both cases, there is accountability needed for flippant spending decisions that have nothing to do with educating students. But wait, there’s more. Three more school boards – Ottawa-Carleton Public, Toronto Public, and Toronto Catholic – are under investigation by the ministry for failing to address sustained budget deficits.

Unlike the province, which can borrow money to pay for operations, school boards are held to a higher standard. The “do as I say, not as I do” standard – school boards cannot borrow money. In fact, they must have balanced budgets by the end of their fiscal year, and can only show a one per cent deficit that goes against any accumulated surplus. The Toronto and Ottawa boards under investigation are among the largest by enrolment in the province

These are not the only school boards acting poorly, nor the only boards with issues surrounding just money.

Many boards have bloated administration, with superintendents, executive superintendents, and board principals and teachers that sit in administrative offices, not in schools.

When school boards were amalgamated over 25 years ago, one of the key selling features by the government was that move would eliminate duplicative administration. The opposite has happened with administrative bloat filling offices with people pushing paper, not teaching students. But wait, that’s not all.

School boards that operate in the same territory or region are supposed to work with each other. That almost never happens. Take the Upper Canada District School Board, and the Catholic District School Board – except through their grudging ownership of the bus consortium they are required to have for transportation, there is little coordination or cooperation between the boards.

The UCDSB wanted to flip the elementary and secondary school start times, claiming lots of science studies on how this will help the kids. After letting the request drag on for over a year, “no” was the answer from their Catholic partners.

The local French-Catholic school board is looking to expand by building a new elementary school in Winchester. Great idea, except the UCDSB has a large enough surplus space (206) in its North Dundas High School for the new school – the province will likely approve funding for a new building, rather than use up surplus space. Why? No answers were provided to that question. Like the character Joey sharing food on the TV show Friends, there is no sharing between school boards.

Another surprising issue that has not yet drawn the attention of the ministry is the building of a new “central” high school in Cornwall by the UCDSB. Nearly a decade ago, the board of the day put 29 schools up on the closure block, only to choose 12 to consolidate and/or close.

The two Cornwall high schools – Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School, and St. Lawrence Secondary School – were among those and should be rebuilt in a central location for the 46,000-population city. Instead, after nearly a decade of looking, the school will be built on the east end of the city, next to an industrial park, and central to nothing. The French-Catholic high school population also wants a new school. But there is no cooperation between the boards to share spaces, trade buildings, or build together. But wait, there’s more – optics.

The UCDSB trustees recently selected a person from the Smiths Falls area to serve as the new trustee for the rest of the term, to represent Stormont and Glengarry counties. The choice by trustees was an out-of-area candidate rather than one of two candidates who were local to that area. And even though the board chair recused himself from the process entirely due to a family relation being a candidate, that relation to the board chair was selected over two locals. Nothing says local representation like selecting someone from nearly 150 kilometres away to represent you.

Change is coming though, and I believe these issues and more are propelling it. The province has introduced new legislation to give the Minister of Education an easier path to appoint oversight to the boards and how they operate. Those supervisors effectively sideline school board trustees, whose roles have already devolved into a rubber stamp for administration. The Ford government wants to cut red tape – cutting school board trustees and even school boards is a logical place to do so.

If school boards, either by administration or trustees, continue to show examples of bad optics, bad management, a lack of cooperation between boards, and bad fiscal plans, the province will likely do as has been done by Quebec with French language boards: eliminate them entirely and run schools directly from the ministry. It’s not the best idea, as local control is always better. But if the locals boards keep racking up examples of poor judgement, change will come.

This column was originally published in the June 4, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.