Wanderings – Eliminating school board trustees a good start

Ontario’s education system has a lot of problems. Most of those problems can be attributed to restrictive funding formulas, chronic underfunding of programs, and having four publicly funded systems that compete against each other on the taxpayer’s nickel. Placing the cart before the horse, current Education Minister Paul Calandra is beginning to tackle another problem that wasn’t apparent at first — trustees.

Five of the largest school boards in the province have seen their trustees sidelined and a provincial administrator appointed. Rumblings from Queen’s Park suggest that, by the end of the year, Calandra will eliminate or overhaul elected school board trustees. A few months ago, this was thought of as a bad idea. After all, eliminating democratically elected representation is rarely a good thing. Seeing the conduct of some trustees, including interviews with trustees about how they picture their role – this may be a good first step in fixing the province’s education system.

There is a disconnect between what families believe the role of a school board trustee is, what trustees believe their role is, and the actual role.

The general feeling among families is that a trustee is their representative, no different from a municipal councillor or Member of Parliament. If there is an issue that a family cannot resolve through the school administration – then the trustee can be that person to help the family. Most trustees don’t see that as their role.

Trustees see themselves as governance officers. Their job, as many have defined it through what they say at board meetings and in the media, is to be accountable to the board and to govern. As one trustee chair said recently on the radio, trustees shouldn’t be dealing with parents’ bus complaints, that’s not their job. Their job is to ensure administration, through the Director of Education, is doing their job.

Ontario’s school boards are structured similarly to that of municipalities. The elected officials have the power to directly hire and fire one person, that Director of Education. That person is the equivalent to a municipal Chief Administrative Officer. All decisions flow through that one person, as does all direction.

Unlike municipal elected officials, trustees no longer have taxation powers. Nor do they have control over the curriculum taught, as the province controls that.

According to the province, trustees are to build and maintain relationships with the entire community – yet there is little collaboration or even relationship between school boards and municipalities, except for conflict over school use. Trustees have to work towards equity for all students, yet we see an unequal approach to programming and resource allocation across all school boards.

Trustees are to approve a strategic plan, and the annual budget, but without the power to set education tax rates and create funding opportunities for the budget, they have become largely a rubber stamp for administration. A check with little balance, if you will.

Trustees have done themselves no favours either. Squabbles at board meetings have spilled out into the media in London, trustees from a Catholic board were found to have spent an obscene amount of money on a trip to buy art and items for new schools, and some boards couldn’t play by the province’s numbers to balance their books. That last one is partly due to the underfunding of education, but not all of it is.

It is time to re-evaluate the role of the school board trustee, and eliminate the position. Few run for the positions at election time; those who do run are not interested in doing the job as it’s defined, and the role doesn’t fit what families believe it is.

This column was originally published in the October 22, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader